China released its first compulsory standard on mooncakes Monday, specially designed to curb excessive packaging of the traditional sticky sweet cake.

The standard now requires that the packaging cost should not exceed 25 percent of the total costs.

Although the requirement will not come into effect until June the first 2006, the market has already seen a fall in price for mooncakes.

Over the past couple of years, producers have been competing to make the packaging of their mooncakes flashier and more eye-catching. This pushed prices up to ridiculous levels.

Chinese consumers spent 10 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) on mooncakes last year. Spending is expected to dip by 10 percent, averaging at 6 yuan per cake this year.

(CCTV.com September 7, 2005)