Gov't poised to enhance food safety
The Prime Minister's office said Friday (July 11) that Korea will implement a comprehensive safety program by 2012 to effectively prevent harmful ingredients and produce from entering the food chain and reaching consumers.
The Prime Minister's office said key to the goal is the introduction of a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) system to cover 95 percent of all food circulated in the country and to raise overall safety testing standards to those of the European Union (EU).
The details of the new safeguard rules and tracking system are to be established in August and go into affect from December.
The Korean government also plans to hand out 300 billion won ($299 million) to about 4,000 small-scale food manufacturers that need to upgrade their facilities and develop simple to understand guidelines that can be easily followed.
It added that the good agriculture practices (GAP) system that currently guarantees the quality of about 1 percent of all farm goods is to be expanded to at least 10 percent by 2012.
After a meeting led by Prime Minister Han Seung-soo, of senior officials from the agriculture, health, finance and administrative affairs ministries, the premier's office said that in addition to the use of HACCP and expanding the GAP system, efforts will be made to allow ordinary people to closely monitor food safety.
The government is to extend the number of voluntary monitors from 29,000 to 40,000 voluntary monitors who will check for compliance with various food safety, country of origin and genetically modified organism labelling laws that are in effect.
By Yoon Sojung
Korea.net Staff writer