The top 10 list of most-read APAC food and beverage regulation and policy stories this year features news from various countries such as China, India, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia and many more.
Click through the gallery to see them all.
The top 10 list of most-read APAC food and beverage regulation and policy stories this year features news from various countries such as China, India, South Korea, Japan, India, Malaysia and many more.
Click through the gallery to see them all.
South Korea has enforced regulations banning the usage of plastic materials that are difficult to recycle such as PVC and coloured PET bottles for the packaging of food and beverage items.
This is part of the country’s objective to reduce its plastic waste production by half, as well as more than double recycling rates from 34% to 70% by 2030.
"The comprehensive countermeasures focus on enhancing public management and stabilizing the recycling market,” South Korean Ministry of Environment (MoE) Minister Kim Eun-kyung said at an announcement back in 2018, not long after China announced an import ban on 24 types of recyclables.
“The government will be involved in the life cycle of the products, starting from production to the recycling process.”
The ban was implemented by the MoE under the Act on the Promotion of Saving and Recycling of Resources, focusing on PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) and coloured PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) plastic bottles, as these are known to be more difficult to recycle as compared to transparent PET plastic bottles.
Read the full story here.
Tensions between Australia and China started running high back in May/June over barley tariffs and beef bans - this has been deemed to be nothing new nor solely due to ‘punishing behaviour’ over COVID-19, according to several trade consulting experts.
Rumours have run rife in the industry about how Australia’s call for an international investigation into the origins of COVID-19 resulted in retaliatory responses by China, most notably by slapping an 80% tariff on barley imports as well as banning meat imports from four of Australia’s largest meat processors.
This was viewed as ‘comebacks’ and ‘trade retaliation’, but trade consultants in Australia have argued that this may not be the case.
“Given the current political climate, it is easy to say one party felt attacked and took action [to retaliate] but in fact, if you take a closer look at it, COVID-19 is unlikely to be the sole reason or main motivating factor behind such major trade moves, there are definitely other driving forces behind it,” trade policy consultancy ITS Global Director and international trade expert Jon Berry told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“The case of the meat/beef bans were due to technical export issues including the incorrect labelling of cartons, hormone growth promotant (HGP) status, and animal health certificates – and in fact, this suspension is nothing new. Back in 2017, some of the same meat processors also got banned for three months due to labelling issues.
“As for the barley tariff, this was the result of what we call an anti-dumping investigation, which is generally linked to domestic interests. So it’s far more likely that China is looking to protect its local producers, and remedy any perceived damage caused by barley imports with this tariff.”
Read the full story here.
Palm oil trade between Malaysia and India were seen to have moved back on track around August, with the latter running low on local stock and the former relaxing export tariffs as both countries moved to repair a trade relationship wrecked by previous political clashing.
The Indian government issued a boycott order on Malaysian palm oil to all its traders in January this year after then-Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohammad criticised India’s move to strip Kashmir of its special status and ‘invading and occupying’ it.
Tun Mahathir was ousted by successor and current Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin in March, and since then both countries have been trying to repair ties.
“For the first few months of 2020, Malaysian palm oil exports to India were hit pretty badly, they were only taking some 10% to 12% of their normal monthly intake,” Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) CEO Datuk Dr Kalyana Sundram told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“One of the primary reasons for this was also due to the shutdown of the Hotel, Restaurants and Cafes (HORECA) industry in the country, as palm oil is mostly used by this industry and it could not function under lockdowns.
“Demand seems to be back on the rise now. Also domestic stocks they had left were running out and they need to replenish, so are importing more palm oil again – At the end of the day, palm oil is a crucial part of the country’s food security so they have to replenish.”
Read the full story here.
Two countries in the Middle East suspended import of some Chinese food products earlier this year in order to soothe public concerns in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Jordan implemented a temporary import ban on February 2 for all animal and plant-based products from China.
Karim Al-Hussami, director of licensing at Jordanian Agriculture Ministry said in a media statement: “Import licenses from China have been suspended until further notice. This will be reviewed in the coming period when things stabilise.”
In Egypt, the Vegetables and Fruits Division of the Cairo Chamber of Commerce officially announced on February 9 that imports of garlic, carrot and green ginger from China would be temporarily suspended.
Earlier on February 2, Egypt Today reported that several Egyptian importers had already suspended signing deals to import Chinese garlic due to COVID-2019 before the official announcement.
The head of the vegetables and fruits division at the Chamber of Commerce, Hatem Naguib had soothed worries from consumers about the current supply of garlic in the country. He affirmed that Chinese garlic circulating in the Egyptian market is safe as it had entered the country before the rise of the virus and was subjected to screening by the General Organization For Export and Import Control.
Read the full story here.
When governments started implementing COVID-19 lockdowns to control outbreaks earlier this year, the F&B manufacturing sector was classified as an ‘essential service’ by many APAC countries, enabling factories to continue producing food supplies – but this was not seen in some places which needed the supply the most.
Many countries in the APAC region enforced nationwide lockdowns in an attempt to control the spread of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus. The initial implementation of lockdowns saw the F&B industry in many countries scrambling to get confirmation about whether or not F&B manufacturing would be able to continue operations and gain access to public COVID-19 support, which would only be made possible if these were classified as ‘essential services’.
It soon became clear that although some countries allowed F&B manufacturing and logistics to continue, food supply woes still loomed large, especially in some of the countries that need this security the most.
Read the full story here to see a summary of the situations in various countries at the height of the pandemic in APAC.
In June, the Philippines was considering implementing higher sugar taxes as well as new taxes on ‘junk food’ high in sodium and trans fat to offset the costs incurred by the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.
This additional taxation was proposed under the Philippine Program for Recovery with Equity and Solidarity (PH-PROGRESO) draft proposal submitted by the Philippines Department of Finance (DOF) as part of a ‘Phased and adaptive recovery approach’.
According to the proposal slides, which FoodNavigator-Asia has viewed, these fall under what DOF deems to be ‘Targeted tax incentives’, and are expected to be part of the country’s ‘Recovery Stage’ from COVID-19 which is expected to take place until December 2020 before moving to a ‘Resiliency Stage’ in 2021.
“[There are] three possible growth cases [from this point], but it is hard to put an estimate right now,” said DOF at the time.
“The first is a V-shape: quick recovery starting July 2020; the second is a W-shape: quick recovery starting July 2020 followed by a second wave of infection, and the third is a Long U-shape (valley): long recovery spanning several quarters, with likely recovery in 2022 when vaccine is developed.
“We can proactively use policies to achieve a V-shaped recovery.”
One of the taxes that the DOF hoped to adjust to achieve this recovery was that on sugar-sweetened beverages, which currently stands at PHP4.50 (US$0.09) for beverages sweetened with a caloric or non-caloric sweetener (non-high-fructose corn syrup) and PHP 9.00 (US$0.18) per litre for those with high-fructose corn syrup.
Read the full story here.
Japan has banned the use of the terms ‘artificial’ and ‘synthetic’ to describe food additives on all food and beverage labels after consumer research found they were causing consumers to shun such products.
This was announced by the Japanese Consumer Affairs Agency (CAA) as a revision to the country’s Food Labelling Standards, a revision based on a Food Additive Labelling study conducted by the agency.
“According to the study results, consumers tend to avoid products that are labelled with the words ‘artificial’ and ‘synthetic’ when it comes to food additives [even though these have been certified by the government],” said CAA in the revision report.
“Hence after discussion it is the consensus that these terms should be deleted from food labels, [so] ‘synthetic preservatives’ and ‘artificial sweeteners’ [should be termed] ‘preservatives’ and ‘sweeteners’ [so as to] prevent further misidentification by consumers.
“Additionally, surveys conducted with trade associations and other industry stakeholders have found that the term ‘chemical seasonings’ may affect consumers' understanding [and] a further study will be carried out to investigate this.”
Food manufacturers had to remove the terms ‘artificial’ and synthetic’ from being associated with additives including sweeteners, colourants, preservatives, flavourings and fragrances.
Read the full story here.
As early as March to April this year, the Chinese government had been pushing for a ‘return to normalcy’ for what it deems ‘low-risk’ COVID-19-affected areas within the country, even when faced with multiple challenges in the form of public anxiety over food security and what were deemed to be relaxed local control measures at the time.
China’s Wuhan was the first epicentre of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Its strict control measures implemented since January helped it to fall behind the United States and European countries such as Spain and Italy.
But around March to April, food supply and security surfaced as a pressing concern within the country, especially with multiple countries such as Vietnam and India stopping food exports.
In addition, documents that were purportedly leaked on social media from a high-level committee meeting at Linxia prefecture revealed orders for special arrangements to be made to ‘ensure food security’ locally.
“The State Party Committee and the state governments and counties and cities [must use multiple routes] to store grains, beef, mutton, oil, salt and other daily living necessities,” stated the leaked document, which was circulated on Twitter amongst other social platforms.
“The public should also be guided to proactively ensure that they have food stores for some three to six months at home in case of emergencies.
“There should be heightened awareness and urgency about the need to strengthen food storage and supply.”
Read the full story here.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority India (FSSAI) has revealed plans to make fortification mandatory for edible oil and milk over the next few months, in addition to intensifying its focus on local staples such as rice, wheat and salt.
According to FSSAI Director (Food Fortification Resource Centre/FFRC) Inoshi Sharma, the mandatory regulations will apply to all food and beverage companies dealing in edible oil and milk within India’s organised food sector.
“At present it is not mandatory to fortify these foods, but we will be issuing regulations in about three or four months that will make it compulsory for all edible oil and milk from any manufacturer in the open market to be fortified,” Sharma told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“This applies to all companies within the relevant organized sectors in India, so the big food firms and SMEs alike – but of course if the producer is not part of the organized sector and is just selling milk from the two cows in his backyard, then this will not apply.
The new FSSAI new regulations will allow for higher levels of fortification to be achieved by permitting fortificants to be added up till amounts that will translate to provide between 30% to 50% of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA).
Read the full story here.
In March, the Indonesian National Police and Philippines Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) both issued orders to limit the purchases of noodles, rice and other staple food items nationwide in hopes of curbing the hoarding and panic-buying induced by the COVID-19 outbreak at the time.
After months of claiming that the country had not seen any COVID-19 cases, Indonesia’s announcement of its first cases at the time led to an immediate spurt of panic-buying across the country, with rice and noodles particularly high on shoppers’ lists.
As of March 30, the number of cases in the country hit some 1,285 with 114 deaths announced, and with waves of panic buying continuing to break out, the police stepped in with orders for retailers to limit purchases and thus prevent hoarding.
The order was issued by the Indonesian National Police’s Food Stability Taskforce to trade associations including the Indonesian Retailers Association (Aprindo), the Jakarta office of the Market Sellers Cooperatives (Puskoppas) and the Indonesian Provincial Government Association (APPSI).
“We have issued a letter [regarding the rationing] to make sure nobody takes advantage of the situation,” taskforce head Brigadier Geneneral Daniel Tahi Monang told Kompas.
“The prices of [food] staples have increased somewhat, but not yet soared, due to rising demand after some panic buying. [There] is enough supply of necessities so there is no need to panic buy.”
In the letter numbered B/1872/III/Res.2.1/2020/Bareskrim, retailers were ordered to limit maximum selling amounts of food items including rice (maximum 10kg), sugar (maximum 2kg), vegetable oil (maximum 4 litres) and instant noodles (maximum two boxes).
Read the full story here.
