Korea is heavily dependent on imported food (except rice) and feed grains, most of which were sourced from the United States until the severe drought in the United States in 2012. A limited amount of food products are made from biotech ingredients due to consumer concerns about biotechnology, whereas the bulk of livestock feed is made from biotech corn and soybean meal. Brazil is the top grain supplier to Korea in 2013.
Imports of biotech grains as well as genetically engineered animals are regulated under the Living Modified Organism (LMO) Act. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) announced its first revision of the LMO Act on December 2012 with a few modifications including a definition of stacked events. Overall, however, it still fails to make the fundamental distinction between seed and food, feed and processing (FFP), to revise redundant risk assessment process nor does it have a workable adventitious presence definition. The revised Act shall go into effect on December 12, 2013.
MOTIE plans to complete the revision of lower regulations to reflect changes made in the revised Act before the end of 2013.
