The country's top health authority wants to scrap or combine more than 1,400 food standards over the next two years to streamline food safety rules, an official said on Thursday.

A National Health and Family Planning Commission survey last year of the 4,934 food standards found that 1,492 of them contradicted others or were redundant. Merging or scrapping them altogether would be preferable, said Su Zhi, director of the commission's food safety standard and supervision evaluation department.

"Some standards overlapped," he said at a news conference on Thursday.