South Korea to Include E-Commerce Sales in Food Safety Guidelines

South Korea has expanded its food safety and monitoring guidelines to tighten control over food and beverage products currently purchased by consumers overseas to include e-commerce sales.  The South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) recently published formal guidelines to govern ‘directly purchased overseas food products’ as purchased by consumers and brought back into the country, such as purchase done via e-commerce.  
MFDS planned procedure will be to collect risk data on the foreign ingredients for review, whereupon a committee will create specific profiles for these ingredients and designate these as prohibited or not, which will determine permission for entry into South Korea.
    These new guidelines have very distinct implications for local e-commerce platforms and vendors, as previously food and beverage products sold online were not considered ‘for sale locally’ and governance was less strict under the Food Sanitation Act.  The new rules now mean that the ingredients and raw materials used to make all food and beverage products sold on e-commerce websites will need to be scrutinized and examined by the relevant sellers and platforms to ensure that these are not in violation of the new guidelines.  Consumers will also no longer be able to purchase any products with ingredients on the banned list in South Korea via the online route.