Chinese-made Kimchi Passed Off as Domestic... 74 Group Catering Facilities Caught Violating Origin Labeling

A school meal ingredient supplier was caught and criminally charged for falsely labeling Chinese garlic stems as domestic products and supplying them to schools. There were also cases where Chinese napa cabbage kimchi was cooked and sold with the origin falsely labeled as domestic.

The National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service under the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs announced on the 1st that it conducted a 12-day origin labeling inspection from April 15 to 26 on collective meal service facilities (such as daycare centers and nursing hospitals) and detected 74 violating businesses (90 items).

An official from the agency explained, "This inspection was specially planned because collective meal service facilities operated by daycare centers and nursing hospitals do not allow users to choose menus and have relatively less interest in origin labeling compared to general restaurant users, making it highly likely that the origin of ingredients could be falsified."

Since March, the agency has sent 30,319 origin labeling guidance notices to collective meal service facilities nationwide, and in collaboration with the Food Safety Management Institute, conducted origin labeling education for 1,762 facility operators (directors and nutritionists) and distributed origin labeling guidance notices to daycare centers and others.

The inspection results showed that the types of collective meal service facilities were 23 industrial sites, 21 nursing hospitals, 16 daycare centers, 6 welfare facilities, 5 schools, and 3 meal ingredient suppliers, in that order. The violating items were napa cabbage kimchi (22 cases), soybeans and tofu products (20), pork (16), chicken (13), beef (7), rice (4), and duck meat (4), respectively.

Among the detected businesses, 51 companies that falsely labeled the origin were criminally charged, and 23 companies caught for failing to label the origin were fined a total of 10.4 million KRW.

Park Seong-woo, head of the agency, said, "The agency plans to continuously strengthen promotion and inspection of origin labeling at facilities used by children and the elderly, who our society must protect. Also, from the 1st to the 14th (14 days), we will conduct origin labeling crackdowns on flowers such as carnations, whose demand increases in May, the month of family."