Government Promotes Standardization of Food Nutrition Information... "Expecting Expanded Utilization"

Establishment of Public-Private Development Council... Biannual Meetings for Management
Standardized Information Available on Public Data Portal

The government has formed a public-private development council through a joint effort of related ministries to standardize the management of food nutrition information. The purpose is to enhance the convenience of consumers and companies in utilizing nutrition information and to expand its scope of use.

On the 20th, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs announced that it has established a development council involving industry, academia, related organizations, and the government through a joint effort of related ministries to discuss the standardization of food nutrition information and ways to utilize standardized information. The council will discuss the overall operation of the database, including the standardization of food nutrition information and the use of standardized food nutrition information. The council will hold its first meeting on the 21st and plans to hold meetings twice a year going forward.

Until now, each ministry has produced, collected, and disclosed food nutrition information by jurisdiction, such as agricultural products, seafood, and processed foods. However, the units and formats of the information provided by each ministry differed, causing difficulties for consumers and companies who had to reprocess the data when using it. To resolve this, in June 2021, related ministries (Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Rural Development Administration, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, National Institute of Fisheries Science) signed a memorandum of understanding.

In June last year, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs standardized and disclosed 46,000 pieces of food nutrition information produced and collected by each ministry. In December, to improve user convenience and expand the data held, it opened and provided a second batch of approximately 66,000 cumulative pieces of food nutrition information. Going forward, the ministry plans to provide the latest food nutrition information annually through continuous quality management of the database.

The standardized food nutrition information is available to anyone on the Public Data Portal and is also provided in the form of an open API. A ministry official stated, “The provision of standardized food nutrition information is expected to expand its use in related industries such as food tech and non-face-to-face health management services,” adding, “We plan to link and utilize the reliable and highly usable food nutrition information with school meal systems (4th generation intelligent NAIS) and public meal platforms.”