Research Reports
A Study on Reorganization of Food-Related Law Structure
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AuthorLee, Kyeiim
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Publication Date2008.11.01
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Original
Food-related domestic laws are administered in several government departments. This results in a lack of specialty, unity, and responsibility which could be accomplished in a single government department in implementing food-related laws. The purpose of this study is to find an improvement for food law structure for efficiently administering food law by examining the food law structures of several foreign countries and carrying out consumer and food company surveys.
There are four main problems in domestic food law structure. First, various government departments have their own food-related laws and are in charge of many services, causing unnecessary cost and resource spending by bringing about redundancy and distribution of regulation. Second, various food operating systems make food agencies inefficient and delay coping with the food safety incidents. Third, food labeling-related law is separately operated in commodity units and the scope of target commodity is not clearly defined, thus making unclear the locus of responsible agency when coming about food accidents. Lastly, regulation of food law of each department is an obstacle to constructing mutual sharing among different agencies.
A domestic food-related law structure is evaluated in five aspects. First, currently, there is no food fundamental law covering all foods, and it is scattered according to the competent authorities. Second, since objectives of most food-related laws are associated with hygiene, safety, quality show and industry promotion, their roles are not clearly defined and related contents tend to be repeated. Third, food laws related to safety management are independently worked in several departments. Fourth, laws related to food labeling are included in individual law in commodity units, and those are not regulated in the upper law. Fifth, a range of food industry is ambiguous in law for promoting food industry.
As a main problem of domestic food law structure, food manufacturers, processors, and food hospitality industries indicate that there are too many related laws, whereas traditional food industries, agricultural management groups, and consumer groups point out that food-related laws and departments are dispersed. Food industries and consumer groups all agree with the unification of food-related laws.
A medium-and long-term plan for a food-related law structure is to enact food fundamental law including both the existing ‘food safety fundamental law’ and ‘agriculture, rural communities and food industry fundamental law’, and to comprehend laws related to food qualities. An advantage of this plan is to solve many problems that the dispersed food law system could bring about by unifying food-related laws into one law. However, a disadvantage of the plan is an extensive adjustment of food law structure and an opposition of the existing institutions. A short-term plan is to extract common factors applicable to food quality labeling of agricultural, marine, livestock products and their processed products and enact a unified law about food qualities. This plan provides a benefit to maintain a balance among institutions by role assignment and mutual control, whereas legal overlapping and contradiction may occur due to a share of work responsibility.
For a rational improvement of food law operation law revision should be regularly enforced to minimize unnecessary cost and make law demander, such as consumers and food companies, cope with new law environment. In addition, the publication of law handbook or question and answer(Q&A) need to be considered for relevant understanding and utilization of law demands.
Researchers: Lee, Kyei-Im, Han, Jae-Hwan, Son, Eun-Young
Research Period: 2008.6~11
E-mail address: lkilki@krei.re.kr
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