National People's Congress Deputy Zhang Xuewu: Suggest embedding traditional brand experience spaces into urban cultural and tourism consumption routes and promoting digital labels for the food industry in phases.

This year, Zhang Xuewu, a National People’s Congress representative and Chairman of Yan Jin Pu Zi Food Co., Ltd., brought seven suggestions regarding issues such as structural bottlenecks in the supply and demand connection of traditional brands and the overall application of digital food labels still being in the early stages. These include fostering innovative collaboration mechanisms between old brands and new consumption, promoting high-quality development of the konjac industry, expanding the digital labeling of food products, accelerating the “Three Reductions” initiative for snack foods, and transforming the food industry with “Artificial Intelligence+”.

According to Zhang Xuewu, Chinese time-honored brands are a “brand treasure trove” with cultural heritage and public trust on the supply side of consumption in China. In today’s environment where customer acquisition costs for new brands continue to rise, the flavors embedded in national memory, which naturally possess cross-generational public trust, are rare “trust anchors” in the era of rational consumption. From the demand side, cultural identity consumption among young generations is experiencing structural explosive growth. However, the industry reality is that most brands still “have a name but weak growth.”

Regarding solutions, Zhang emphasizes “breaking down collaboration barriers through institutional innovation,” which requires a set of underlying mechanisms that allow market forces to flow fully. His suggestions include establishing a rights confirmation and licensing trading system for “core flavor” assets; piloting innovative mechanisms like “Old Brand Flavor Partners”; promoting an open IP ecosystem with “low-threshold licensing + origin binding”; integrating old brand experience spaces into urban cultural tourism routes; and building a “Chinese Local Flavors” quality grading and certification system.

Focusing on the food industry and aligning with development trends, Zhang notes that digital transformation and the “dual carbon” goals are deeply integrated. Digital labels and carbon labels are vital supports for high-quality development in the food industry. They are not only key tools for safeguarding consumer rights and enhancing industry competitiveness but also important carriers for upgrading the entire food supply chain and implementing major national strategies.

To accelerate the adoption of digital food labels and build a safe, green, and efficient food industry system, Zhang proposes the following:

1. Establish a full-chain system with phased mandatory promotion of digital labels. Led by the State Administration for Market Regulation, develop detailed implementation rules for mandatory digital labeling in the food industry, achieving full traceability visualization and precise nutritional information. Clearly define scope, timelines, and responsible entities, with phased coverage: prioritize key categories such as infant formula, health foods, and pre-packaged fresh foods, aiming for full coverage of large enterprises by 2027 and extending to small and micro enterprises by 2030.

2. Improve the carbon label system and strengthen tiered support. Standardize carbon label content, specify CO2 equivalent, evaluation levels, traceability QR codes, data validity periods, and unify label styles and materials.

3. Promote label integration and break down data barriers. Implement “multi-code integration” models, combining carbon and digital label data for “one-scan, multiple-queries,” reducing packaging and operation costs for enterprises. Implement QR code integration policies, build a nationwide public service platform, and connect data across enterprises, regulators, and third-party organizations to enable data sharing of carbon emissions and traceability. Use public advertising and community activities to promote label knowledge and low-carbon concepts, guiding consumers to prioritize low-carbon foods.

4. Improve incentive and restraint mechanisms, strengthen supervision and accountability. Incorporate label application into enterprise credit evaluations, strictly investigate false labeling and data falsification, and establish joint disciplinary mechanisms for dishonesty. Offer tax reductions and green credit incentives to companies with full label coverage and significant carbon reduction results, motivating proactive participation.

Meanwhile, Zhang also notes that artificial intelligence (AI) is profoundly reshaping industry development models. In the food industry, vertical large models now cover R&D, production, and marketing processes; digital twin factories and production lines enable virtual debugging, real-time optimization, and remote operation; AI combined with synthetic biology designs foods at the molecular level, driving disruptive innovations in cell-cultured meat and precision nutrition; AI also helps optimize energy consumption, supporting the industry’s carbon reduction goals. AI has become the core engine for intelligent transformation in the food industry.

To promote “AI+” and accelerate the industry’s transformation, Zhang recommends: strengthening policy support to address funding shortages; closing technical gaps and enhancing technological support; strengthening talent cultivation to solidify transformation foundations; leveraging leading companies to drive coordinated development—encouraging major food enterprises to demonstrate leadership, share AI application experiences, technological achievements, and solutions, thereby motivating small and medium-sized enterprises to accelerate their transformation and form a healthy development pattern of “leading large enterprises with coordinated follow-up by SMEs.”

Editor: Wang Can, Lin Chen