I Trusted It... Baby Food Worth 25 Billion Won "False Ingredient Labeling"

Raw Material Composition Labeled Differently from Reported Facts
Actual Ingredient Content Differs from Stated Amount

A food manufacturing and processing company that mislabeled product ingredients has been caught and will face administrative sanctions.

A total of 149 infant and toddler baby foods and instant cooked foods were found to have false labeling of raw material content.
[Photo by Ministry of Food and Drug Safety]

On the 14th, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced that it had detected Company N, located in Gyeryong-si, Chungnam, for violating the 'Food Sanitation Act' and the 'Act on Labeling and Advertising of Foods' by labeling and selling infant weaning food with ingredient contents different from those reported in the product manufacturing report, and requested administrative action from the competent authorities.

Earlier, the Ministry received information that Company N falsely labeled the ingredient contents of its products and conducted an unannounced inspection from the 30th of last month to the 1st of this month.

The inspection revealed that Company N had mixed some raw materials differently from what was reported in the product manufacturing report for 149 products (weaning foods and ready-to-eat foods) manufactured and sold from January 2021 to July this year. It was also found that the ingredient contents were labeled differently from the actual mixing ratios and sold.

Among the products sold by the company, Product A was labeled as containing 15.7% Korean beef and 8.7% vitamin vegetables, but in reality, it contained 5.6% Korean beef and 6.8% vitamin vegetables. Another Product B was labeled as containing 9.5% avocado and 10.8% shrimp (shrimp meat), but the actual mixing ratios were about half, with 5.8% avocado and 5.8% shrimp meat.

Products with such falsely labeled ingredients were sold through 27 major online shopping malls, including Company N’s own mall, Coupang, and 11st, amounting to approximately 24.8 billion KRW (10 million units of 100~180g).

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has taken measures to ensure the company corrects all legal violations, and plans to conduct a focused investigation in the fourth quarter on infant food manufacturers to check for any false labeling of ingredients.

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