Delivery Apps Labeling Chinese Kimchi as Domestic... 78 Cases of False or Missing Origin Information in Online Sales Detected

A restaurant located in Chungbuk was caught falsely labeling the origin of Chinese-made napa cabbage kimchi as domestic on a delivery app while serving it as a side dish.

The National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service under the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs announced on the 26th that it conducted a "regular origin labeling inspection for online sales" over 10 days from the 11th to the 22nd of this month, criminally prosecuting 46 places that falsely labeled origin and imposing a total fine of 11.8 million KRW on 32 places that failed to label origin.

During this regular inspection, the NAPQMS cyber inspection team (350 members) checked 5,332 places, mainly delivery apps where origin labeling is weak, and gave first guidance and instruction to 1,181 places with inappropriate origin labeling to accurately indicate the origin. For suspected violators, special judicial police and consumer group honorary inspectors conducted joint on-site inspections.

As a result of the inspection, 67 cases of origin violations were found on delivery apps, accounting for 85.9% of the total. The main items violated were napa cabbage kimchi (25 cases), chicken (12 cases), tofu products (11 cases), and pork (9 cases), in that order.

Among the types of origin violations, many cases involved cooking and selling with foreign ingredients while falsely labeling the origin as domestic. There were also cases where imported durup daemok (the base wood used when grafting durup shoots) was used to produce durup shoots domestically, but the origin was labeled as domestic instead of the importing country, resulting in detection.

There were also cases of violations due to unfamiliarity with origin labeling regulations. Therefore, online sales intermediary companies plan to improve their systems by adding origin guidance phrases for processed products, provide education to tenant companies, and activate customer service centers (CS) to expand inquiries and guidance on origin labeling.

Park Seong-woo, director of NAPQMS, said, "To establish management of agricultural product origin labeling online, we plan to continuously manage by promoting special inspections on delivery apps mainly in the metropolitan area in June."

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