Korea Amends the Health Functional Foods Act

On January 15, 2019, the Korean National Law Information Centre amended the “Health Functional Foods Act“, that will go info force on February 16, 2019 and repeals the “Health Functional Food Act (No.15938)” from December 11, 2018.

The Act defines health functional foods as “foods that are manufactured (including processing) by using raw materials or ingredients having useful functions in the human body“ and establishes policies to ensure improved quality, distribution and sales of the subject matter.

With this amendment, the main changes affect:

• Marking of genetically modified health functional foods (Article 17-2);
• Criteria for the composition of the Health Functional Food Deliberation Committee established by the Food and Drug Administration (Article 27);
• Cancellation of Business License (Article 32).

Read the full text of the amendment here.