Abstract:Objective To explore a new way to conduct follow-up evaluation for national food safety standards and build rudimentary indexes to evaluate the quality of national food safety standards. Methods The suggestions for national food safety standards from stakeholders were collected through the ‘tracking evaluation and feedback platform for food safety standards'. The high frequency keywords were selected and the suggestions were classified into different groups depending on the content. The type of suggestions reflected the perspectives of stakeholders. According to the result of classification, the evaluation dimensions for national food safety standards were generalized from the suggestions. Results Totally 873 valid suggestions were collected through internet platform from January to August 2017. The high frequency keywords were ‘inspection & method', ‘index & limit’,‘label & mark’,‘scope & classification’. Four evaluation dimensions, including the ‘relevance’ of standard project or revision, the ‘science’, ‘achievability’ and ‘coordination’ of the standard, and fifteen indexes under the four dimensions were generalized from the suggestions. Conclusion Through analyzing the suggestions, the rudimentary two-level assessment index system was developed. The assessment of national food safety standards should emphasis on the relevance of standard project or revision, the science base of standard text, the achievability of standards and the coordination with related policies and regulations.