From September 7 to 10, 2026, a delegation from the State Administration for Market Regulation visited the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, for exchange and cooperation on catering food safety supervision. The delegation focused on areas such as catering licensing management, routine supervision, food safety science popularization and publicity, food recall mechanisms, and food safety risk control, and conduct research and learn from Hong Kong's relevant institutional design and mature practical experience.

The visit represents pragmatic cooperation between the mainland China and Hong Kong SAR in food safety supervision. The delegation held discussions with the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department of Hong Kong covering catering licensing, routine supervision of catering enterprises, management of markets and street vendors, food safety risk control, press release and public opinion handling, and explored establishing a regular exchange and visit mechanism. The delegation conducted field visits to central kitchens, chain catering outlets, Wan Chai Market, the Jardine’s Bazaar hawker area in Causeway Bay, as well as mainlandfunded catering outlets in Hong Kong. It gained indepth insights into quality control of central kitchens, standardized operation of catering outlets, tenancy management for market stalls and hawker licensing governance. By observing production, coldchain logistics, backofhouse operations and stall management, the delegation drew on experience including automated control, critical control point management, and enforcing entities’ accountability through contractual arrangements, and held onsite professional dialogues with Hong Kong regulatory authorities and enterprise managers.

During the visit, the delegation obtained a comprehensive understanding of Hong Kong’s food safety supervision system, wholechain risk control for food enterprises and standardized governance models for small-scale vendors. It acquired key knowledge of collaborative governance featuring licensing, tenancy administration and lawenforcement coordination, end-to-end standardized management, risk earlywarning and supervision approaches for livelihoodrelated business formats. Pragmatic discussions were carried out on capacitybuilding for crossboundary regulatory collaboration. The visit broadened the mainland’s perspective on food safety supervision, deepened understanding of overseas regulatory frameworks and advanced corporate practices, and generated practical references for optimizing the mainland’s supervision over agricultural markets, street vendors and chain catering businesses, as well as for advancing food safety professional collaboration with Hong Kong.