As the summer vacation season approaches, the consumption of meat is increasing, and several businesses have been caught deceiving customers by selling foreign livestock products as domestic goods.
On the 24th, the National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service announced that it had caught 392 businesses violating origin labeling regulations after inspecting import and distribution companies, restaurants in tourist areas, and livestock sales outlets from the 14th of last month to the 14th of this month.
This inspection was conducted with a focus on duck and goat meat, both of which are increasingly consumed as substitutes for traditional foods since the enforcement of the law banning the consumption of dog meat. Cases of lack of origin labeling and false labeling were among the targets of the crackdown.
A total of 355 violations were identified. By item, duck accounted for the largest number with 161 cases (45.4%), followed by pork with 88 cases (24.8%), goat meat with 42 cases (11.8%), beef with 37 cases (10.4%), chicken with 26 cases (7.3%), and honey with 1 case (0.3%).
A restaurant in Jeju sold Portuguese pork belly as Jeju pork, while a restaurant in Gyeongbuk labeled Brazilian chicken as domestic chicken and sold it.
Among these, the National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service criminally charged 103 businesses for falsely labeling foreign products as domestic, and imposed a total of 74 million won in fines on 226 businesses that failed to label origin.
Park Sun-yeon, the head of the National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service, noted, 'We will continue to strengthen the crackdown on origin labeling for livestock products, the consumption of which is increasing,' adding, 'Next month, we also plan to conduct special inspections on holiday essentials for Chuseok.'