As consumers' incomes increase, the demand for quality food goods and safer production soars in Korea. And consumer interest in food safety is growing in accordance with the increasing incidents of food poisoning, label-falsification. The Korean government has adopted the certification programs such as GAP(Good agricultural practice), HACCP(Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) to enhance the food safety in domestic level since the 1990's. The certification programs have continuously improved the food safety management systems to ensure confidence in the delivery of safe food to consumers.
Government ministry and affiliated agency in Korea are mainly responsible for the management of the food safety certification programs. These include the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forest and Fishery and Korea Food and Drug Administration. The former basically handles the certifications on farm level including the GAP, the HACCP for livestock and fishery, and the latter deals with those of HACCP in terms of food processing and GMP(Good manufacturing practice).
This report addresses an overview of the food safety certification programs adopted in Korea(GAP, HACCP) and suggest recommendations to improve the effectiveness of those programs. First, these programs are too segmented by items, departments and food-chain, besides the standards and regulations of some programs are often overlapped. It created the confusion to consumers as well as to producers, and caused unnecessary social costs. It is important to consider integrating and streamlining the certification system. Second, many programs weakened the consumer consciousness of the certifications and lowered the credibility of the products labeled. The government is required to more focus on the consumer awareness of the certifications through various outreach programs.
Government ministry and affiliated agency in Korea are mainly responsible for the management of the food safety certification programs. These include the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forest and Fishery and Korea Food and Drug Administration. The former basically handles the certifications on farm level including the GAP, the HACCP for livestock and fishery, and the latter deals with those of HACCP in terms of food processing and GMP(Good manufacturing practice).
This report addresses an overview of the food safety certification programs adopted in Korea(GAP, HACCP) and suggest recommendations to improve the effectiveness of those programs. First, these programs are too segmented by items, departments and food-chain, besides the standards and regulations of some programs are often overlapped. It created the confusion to consumers as well as to producers, and caused unnecessary social costs. It is important to consider integrating and streamlining the certification system. Second, many programs weakened the consumer consciousness of the certifications and lowered the credibility of the products labeled. The government is required to more focus on the consumer awareness of the certifications through various outreach programs.
Je Min