Felippa Amanta, the head of research at CIPS, said on Tuesday that the challenge of maintaining food safety for products bought online was also related to weak monitoring in the market and a lack of traceability.

“One study found that 35 percent of processed foods on ecommerce platforms did not have a permit or the required food labeling,” Felippa said in a virtual discussion. “This causes concern because if the food is not registered, it tends to have a higher risk related to food safety.”

Of more than 23,000 samples of both registered and unregistered food products, half of the unregistered ones failed to meet food safety standards, said Felippa, quoting 2019 data from the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM). Of the registered products, only 14 percent did not meet the standards.

“The complicated process of obtaining permits also hinders food sellers from registering because sometimes this process takes quite a significant amount of time and money, especially for small businesses,” Felippa said.

The pandemic has accelerated consumers’ shift to online shopping during the health crisis. According to the Global Consumer Insights Survey 2020 by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), 69 percent of Indonesian respondents stated that they were buying more groceries online following the implementation of social restrictions to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.

Read also: Retailers embrace consumers’ shift to online channels

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