Policy Address

Streamline the Licensing Regime of Food Businesses

88. The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department will streamline the licensing regime of food businesses from the first quarter next year. The measures include: expanding the scope of the Professional Certification System, which adopts a "licence first, inspection later" approach, to cover general restaurants; introducing a "composite permit" that covers multiple restricted food items to obviate the need for separate applications; setting more lenient licence terms for farms engaged in commercial agricultural production to facilitate the sale of their cooked produce; issuing e-licences for all food business applications and providing applicants with information on the application status online; and enhancing guidelines on licence application to help reduce start-up costs of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.