Starting Tomorrow, Origin Inspections for Ritual Food Agricultural Products... "Catch Domestic Products Disguised as Imported"

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyunjung] Ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, a focused crackdown will be conducted on acts of disguising foreign agricultural products as domestic ones.

The National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service announced on the 2nd that from the 3rd to the 28th of this month, it will carry out a comprehensive inspection of origin labeling on agricultural products used as Lunar New Year gifts and ancestral rites items.

This inspection will focus on traditional foods, health functional foods, regional specialties, meat, fruits, and other gift and ancestral rites items that are in high demand during the Lunar New Year, targeting acts of selling foreign products disguised as domestic ones, or selling domestic products falsely labeled as from famous production areas. Before on-site inspections, the agency will conduct preliminary monitoring of online shopping malls, home shopping channels, and delivery apps using a cyber task force and honorary inspectors, focusing on price levels and other factors. After identifying suspicious vendors, on-site inspections will be carried out.

In addition to cracking down on false origin labeling of ancestral rites items such as dried persimmons and jujubes, the agency will intensively inspect violations of pork origin labeling using an origin verification kit developed last year. The kit determines domestic origin with two lines and foreign origin with one line.

For mail-order sales companies, an origin robot processing automation (RPA) system will be piloted to automatically extract companies with a high likelihood of origin violations. This system analyzes real-time agricultural product import and price data to extract price lists by item for origin-labeled agricultural products sold online, and identifies discrepancies between origin labels on main pages and detailed description pages.

Companies found violating the rules will face strict measures such as criminal charges and fines under the "Act on the Labeling of Origin of Agricultural and Fishery Products." Companies that falsely label origin will be criminally charged and, after prosecution, may face imprisonment of up to seven years or fines up to 100 million won. Companies failing to label origin will be fined up to 10 million won.

Furthermore, companies that violate false or missing origin labeling more than twice will have their names and violations publicly disclosed on the websites of the National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service and the Korea Consumer Agency.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.