South Korea tightens food safety requirements for animal-based food product imports

South Korea already has a strict food safety process in place for livestock product imports that requires specific export certification, which MFDS has announced will be expanded to cover animal-based foods in order to ensure hygiene and safety requirements are met. “MFDS has expanded the import hygiene evaluation system that is currently applied to livestock products to also include animal-based foods,”​ MFDS Minister Oh Yoo-kyung said via a formal statement. “This will ensure that food safety is pre-verified starting at the country of origin before import, via a total of six stages of evaluation procedures where the Korean government will evaluate the food safety management status of the exporting country before deciding whether to allow imports.​ “This means that food manufacturers producing and exporting processed animal-based products such as pork cutlets, chicken tenders, chicken skewers and so on will need to comply, including those with lower meat content below 50%.”​ This ...