This study has the purpose of suggesting a desirable food policy direction and finding necessary tasks to be performed to head in the direction. To this end, policies regarding food industry, nutrition and eating habits, and food safety management were mainly reviewed. Also, researchers have formulated a research council and held policy workshops together with KREI researchers, external experts and policymakers to exchange opinions.
Food industry is a primary industry of producing and supplying foods. It is closely related with other industries, and most of all has a big impact on agriculture and fishery in terms of production inducement. The world food industry has been expanding continuously and the growth of the functional foods market has been especially rapid. The Korean food industry has shown stagnant growth mainly due to its small scale, lacking and inefficient R to help them develop a habit of eating nutritionally-balanced foods; and to actively promote the values of traditional dietary culture, thereby contributing to expanding foreign demand for traditional Korean foods and improving the national image. The Korean government needs to set the goal of establishing proper dietary habits and educate the general public about them.
The trend of eating more imported foods increases the uncertainty about food safety and has the potential to cause a large-scale food safety disaster. Against this backdrop, the interest in food safety among consumers is intensifying as well. Any food safety management policy should be consistently applied from food production to consumption, secure transparency in policy implementation, and enhance consumer trust. To make it possible, the essential tasks to be performed include early settlement of the food safety management policy, preparation of a foundation to build consumer trust, strengthening of the hazardous materials monitoring system, and effective implementation of the food safety policy.
Researchers: Lee, Yong-Sun et al.
E-mail address: yslee@krei.re.kr