The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) is pushing to recognize vitamin K2 as a health-supplementary food ingredient.

Minister of Food and Drug Safety Oh Yu-kyoung visited GF Fermentech, a biomedical supplier in Sejong, to check the progress of regulatory reform tasks related to expanding nutritional ingredients used as raw materials for health functional foods, the ministry said Wednesday.

Minister Oh toured the site where vitamin K2 is produced using the latest biotechnology and listened to opinions from workers, including the expected effects of allowing vitamin K2 as a food additive.

"Expanding the number of nutritional ingredients used as raw materials for functional food will help people maintain health and improve their quality of life," Oh said. "We will complete the approval of vitamin K2 as a functional food ingredient by March next year so that workers in the field can feel it as soon as possible."

GF Fermentech CEO Han Jeong-jun said, "We have succeeded in manufacturing vitamin K2 with our technology but could not use it for domestic health functional foods. So, we hope to use our vitamin K2 in health-functional foods to help promote the public’s health."

The ministry is promoting the expansion of nutritional ingredients for health-functional foods as part of the “Food and Drug Regulatory Innovation 2.0 Project,” and the first such case is vitamin K2, which is in high consumer demand.

The ministry expects to increase the competitiveness of Korean health functional foods by expanding nutritional ingredients.

"Currently, there are no vitamin K2 health functional products in the domestic market, which has led to an increase in the number of overseas direct purchases of vitamin K2 supplement products by consumers," a ministry official said. “The ministry has come forth to take the initiative by recognizing it as a health-functional food ingredient."