South Korea has long viewed HACCP as a critical food safety strategy, having maded certification mandatory for all foreign food firms exporting to South Korea back in 2020.
The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) is now eyeing more significant development in this area for local food firms, and has announced that a specific improvement fund will be made available for HACCP-related facility and technological improvements.
“MFDS will be announcing more policy direction for HACCP this year, and in advance of that food firms can also take advantage of the HACCP facility improvement fund to improve operational hygiene and safety,” MFDS Minister Oh Yoon-kyung announced via a formal statement.
“This facility improvement fund has a budget of KRW4bn (US$3mn) and would help food firms with 50% of renovation and repair costs for food hygiene and sanitation facilities.
“This will be provided for to a maximum of KRW10mn (US$7,526) – the other half of the costs would need be borne by the food company.”
There is also an additional focus on digital technology for HACCP implementation, which the ministry is hopeful will accelerate local industry adoption.
“There will also be an upcoming technology support project for the industry, which will include helping companies work towards a model smart HACCP model,” said MFDS.
“This would be in the form of a manufacturing plant that can provide intelligent services by applying smart HACCP principles, and digitising the entire process to automatically link and control data in real time.
“We already have several such models in operation, one was made to develop of bread products in 2022, and another was for kimchi products in 2023.”
Meat in the spotlight
Meat is often considered a high-risk product in terms of food safety management, and for this reason MFDS will be providing priority support to companies in this sector, especially smaller-scale firms.
“Small-scale meat product companies including those involved in meat processing or both meat processing and packaging will receive priority support from this project,” MFDS stated.
“This refers to meat companies that have annual sales of less than KRW500mn (US$376,305) and less than 21 employees (meat processing) or 10 employees (meat processing and packaging).
“This will include companies that produce processed products such as ham, sausages and luncheon meat.”
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