The food surveillance system on food manufactures and industry in Korea is dual inspection system by Korea Food and Drug Administration(KFDA) and local government authorities. Introduction of local government system caused the reduced right and compli...
The food surveillance system on food manufactures and industry in Korea is dual inspection system by Korea Food and Drug Administration(KFDA) and local government authorities. Introduction of local government system caused the reduced right and compliance power by KFDA and increase of inspection burden of local authorities resulting low efficiency of food surveillance system and decrease of food safety. Statistic data on the sale amount and number of employee of Korea food industry show that more than 80% of food industry are small sized companies which do not have enough inspection system in itself. These data reflect the need of more inspection by government for improving the safety of their food products. America and United Kingdom, which have local government system, recently changed their food inspection system. America increased the number of Regional Office from 5 to 9 and United Kingdom launched Food Standards Agency in 2002, which increase the control of food safety through central government not local authorities. These trend can be found other nations and it is time to introduce stronger and more efficient food inspection and surveillance system by central government agency like KFDA. Three systematic surveillance system is proposed from this study. First, to solve the lack of information on the hygienic violated food products or food facilities, new sentinel monitoring system should be introduced. At least 9 sentinel monitoring centers are need based on the comparison of economic difference, population, number of food facilities, and budget to America's system. Currently, Korea has 6 local KFDA. Therefore, 3 more monitoring systems are required to meet the need of Korean's safety. The possible 3 places are Kangwond-do, Jeju-do, and Kyunggi-do. Second, to improve the efficiency and quality of food surveillance, a kind of Korea Food Inspection Manual(KFIM) should be developed and educated to food inspectors of KFDA. KFDA need a new branch to develop and educate KFIM. Five different KFIM need to be develop according to the types of food industry. Third, to complete the food surveillance activity, KFDA need a system to feedback the performance of food surveillance and to create a database system for future reference and for alerting bad foods to Korean. For each proposed system, required organization and number of people were also suggested. In summary, 3 more sentinel monitoring system need and 52 more inspectors or food related specialists need to be increased to meet the appropriate condition of food surveillance system for Korea.