Is APAC finally moving towards food safety regulatory harmonisation?

APFRAS is made up of 14 major stakeholder countries surrounding the Pacific Ocean, eight from Asia, two from Oceania, two from South America and two from North America. South Korea has acted as the chair and convenor for APFRAS since it was established in 2023, and has just been re-elected for a second consecutive term until 2028.

APFRAS convened for its fourth inaugural summit in Seoul from May 11 to May 12. This took place at a time of massive international trade tensions — including between several of its member countries.

These differences were however put aside for the summit, with discussions focused on improving food safety regulations across the board and achieving a more cohesive system to facilitate better trade amid today’s challenging environment.

“APFRAS has moved beyond our founding stage, and is entering a historic turning point towards broadening influence in food safety regulations,” South Korean Minister of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) Oh Yu-Kyoung told the floor.

“This summit marks a historic turning point for APAC food safety cooperation to take a leap forward [and evolve into] a consultative body that leads global food regulatory harmonisation.”

This need to move forward towards harmonisation was the driver behind the summit’s push to ‘move beyond mere information sharing to tangible, institutional results’, according to MFDS.

“We have already seen tangible results achieved in terms of regulatory harmonisation and export support,” the ministry said in a statement after the summit concluded.

“For instance, South Korea signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the New Zealand Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) for the use of electronic sanitary certificates which will greatly simplify customs clearance, a large step forward for our fisheries sector.”

As for specific regulatory harmonisation, MFDS just released the APFRAS Seoul 2026 Declaration, which the ministry has claimed to show the summit’s commitment towards this unified approach.

“We, the senior representatives of food regulatory authorities [gathered at APFRAS 2026] acknowledge the importance of strategic collaboration in the Asia- Pacific region as we face new opportunities and challenges with regulating food,” the declaration stated.

“Food safety should be understood as a shared, multisectoral responsibility that no single country, organization, or sector can achieve alone. To proactively address the changing environment in international trade, it is important to share the benefits of digitalization and integrate new technologies into food safety management, and enhance regulatory harmonisation and cooperation among member countries.

“We, the senior representatives of food regulatory authorities also agreed to support development of guidelines on recycled plastic materials for food containers and packaging, and on safety management of food and drink for international events.”

According to MFDS, this declaration will help it move forward with initiatives to ‘concretise’ co-operative tasks among the member states, and produce further tangible results in regulatory harmonisation for APFRAS 2027.

So how realistic is harmonisation?

MFDS’ ambitions are noble, but unfortunately it has become clear over the years that declarations and agreements alone rarely translate into concrete changes across systems, especially regulatory systems.

International regulatory harmonisation is the most difficult due to the many differences in opinions and interests involved — other examples have already clearly shown the challenges of implementing regulatory change even within a single country, such as with Indonesia’s halal mandate which was supposed to be enforced by 2024 but is still not yet at 100% two years later, especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

For harmonisation per se, a very specific example of failure to implement can be seen in the ASEAN region, an ironic situation where all member states are considered allies and would benefit from this collaboration, but individual interests have very clearly prevented significant progress.

ASEAN food regulatory harmonisation was in discussion for many years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, after which things rolled to an almost complete stop.

The closest the region came to any form of progress in this area was with the development of the ASEAN Food Safety Policy back in 2016, where the governments promised to ‘create a single market and production base which is stable, prosperous, highly competitive and economically integrated with effective facilitation for trade’.

According to Thailand’s Mahidol University Deputy Director for Policy Asst. Prof Anadi Nitithamyong, who was at the centre of these talks, arriving at decisions was so challenging that the word harmonisation was completely taken off the table.

“We’re looking more at alignment as the way forward instead of harmonisation at the moment,” she said.

“It’s been a hard path, and there are many regulators from many countries involved so there have been many chats, but food regulations are simply not 100% science-based or black and white so we have moved to prioritise different initiatives such as aligning standards for every market’s Healthier Choice system.”

As such, if South Korea truly manages to achieve harmonisation among its members, this will truly be an impressive feat — especially considering that, as mentioned, tensions are already riding high between several of its member states.