Rapid Import Food Reporting 'Electronic Review 24' Expanded to Include Agricultural and Marine Products

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced that from the 18th, the application of the ‘Electronic Review 24 (SAFE-i24)’ system, which automatically inspects and approves imported foods that have no safety issues, will be expanded to include agricultural, livestock, and fishery products.

Image of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety's Imported Food Electronic Review 24 (SAFE-i 24) [Photo by Ministry of Food and Drug Safety]

As food imports continue to increase, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety officially introduced last September a system that automatically conducts electronic reviews and approvals for more efficient import inspections. Until now, the system targeted food additives, but going forward, the system will be expanded to cover agricultural, livestock, and fishery products.

By utilizing Electronic Review 24, the document inspection process, which previously took up to 48 hours and was only possible during business hours, will be shortened to within 5 minutes and will be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including outside business hours. Through this, when an importer of agricultural, livestock, and fishery products submits an import declaration, the computerized system automatically conducts an electronic review by checking over 260 items such as initial import inspection history, use of prohibited ingredients, and nonconformity history. If the results are suitable, an import declaration confirmation certificate is automatically issued. If the review results are unsuitable, an imported food inspector will re-verify.

For this automatic import declaration, the following conditions must be met: ▲the imported food is subject to document inspection as a re-imported item, ▲no additional on-site, detailed, or random sample inspections are required, and ▲the electronic review results are suitable. However, among livestock products, meat is subject to on-site inspection and is not eligible for automatic import declaration approval, so only document review automation will be possible during the Electronic Review 24 process.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety expects that with this expansion of the electronic review application items, the proportion of import declarations subject to electronic review will increase from the previous 5% to 35%, enabling more importers to reduce time and costs for customs clearance. This will improve administrative efficiency and shorten the customs clearance period for imported agricultural, livestock, and fishery products, allowing consumers to purchase fresher foods.

The Electronic Review 24 system, which has been applied and operated since last September, has so far conducted inspections and approvals appropriately without errors. Importers have also positively evaluated the system in terms of time savings, and the electronic review has been smoothly implemented. Among 8,904 imported food additive cases, 3,094 cases (34.7%) were automatically approved without errors, and 875 cases (9.8%) were processed after business hours. Accordingly, in an online survey conducted last month by the Food Safety Information Center targeting importers using Electronic Review 24, 97% responded that automatic approval 'actually helps,' and they reported experiencing effects such as reduced processing time for import declarations and the ability to process approvals outside business hours and on holidays.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety plans to further expand the application items to include processed foods such as processed livestock products and health functional foods by the first half of next year. It will also regularly verify whether inspections and approvals are properly conducted within the system and continue to advance the system. Additionally, education and publicity will be conducted for importers to prevent import declaration errors, and the time saved through electronic review will be used to strengthen on-site (sensory) inspections of agricultural, livestock, and fishery products and focused inspections of high-risk imported foods to thoroughly manage the import of safe foods.

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