The document, titled “Determination of Postbiotic Inactivated Lactic Acid Bacteria Count” is known as a “social organisation standard” or “tuanti biaozhun (团体标准)“ in Chinese. The phrase “lactic acid bacteria” is used interchangeably with postbiotic in the document.
The standards not national standards implemented by the government but may be referenced by the authorities if when drafting national standards.
The association believes that the standards would greatly aid the commercialisation and use of postbiotics in finished consumers products.
The standards were drafted by both local institutions, companies and overseas firms.
They include China’s National Institutes for Food and Drug Control, Inner Mongolia Mengniu Dairy, BYHEALTH, Angel Yeast, Amway China, Health and Happiness Group (H&H Group), Nestle China, Wecare Bio. Overseas firms include Spanish biotech firm AB-BIOTICS and Italy’s Sacco System.
They are two standards listed for determining postbiotic count.
The first one is bacteria counting plate method and is applicable to postbiotic in the form of powder or liquid-based raw materials.
The method counts all bacteria in the sample without distinguishing between different bacterial species or whether the bacteria are inactivated.
The second uses polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and is applicable to postbiotics derived from Bifidobacterium animalis subsp and food products containing such postbiotics.
In both methods, postbiotic count is represented in the unit of per gram or per millilitre.
The CNHFA has been working on the document early as 2022.
This is on the back of rising literature that looks at postbiotics, which saw the term taking greater attention since year 2020.
“Based on published scientific literature, among keywords such as ‘inactivated probiotics’, ‘heat-killed probiotics’, ‘non-living probiotics’, “para-probiotics” and “postbiotics”, the term ‘postbiotics’ has appeared more frequently, especially from 2020.
“However, within the country, the definition of postbiotics and evaluation methods etc are still lacking in the regulatory aspects,” the association said earlier when explaining its rationale for establishing methods for counting postbiotics.
For instance, finished product companies have faced challenges in labelling the amount of postbiotics in a finished product or communicating the health benefits of postbiotics to consumers.
Unlike probiotics which are ‘live’ bacteria, postbiotics refer to something that was once living and has become “inanimate” or are in their “after life”, according to the explanation by the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP).
Prior to this document, CNHFA has also looked into methods for determining postbiotics inactivated cells count in yeast-related products.
However, because most of the industry players that have provided their feedback of the draft are manufacturing lactic acid bacteria types of products, the focus has therefore steered to the latter.
Postbiotics have been shown to promote gut health by increasing butyrate-producing bacteria as seen from an eight-week placebo-controlled trial.
Another research paper, published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition reported that postbiotics could be as effective as probiotics for managing obesity-associated metabolic issues.
