Reuters | November 4, 1999 | Cho Mee-young
SEOUL - An official with South Korea's agriculture ministry was cited as saying on Thursday that it would prepare a proposal detailing guidelines for labelling food containing genetically modified organisms (GMO) by the end of November, adding, "We will make a proposal of specific guidelines related to the GMO labelling by the end of this month."
South Korea's Agro Fisheries Quality Management Act, which regulates GM food labelling, was enacted on July 1. The country's agriculture ministry said earlier that it planned to set guidelines for genetically modified (GM) food by the end of 1999.
The guidelines would include what kinds of agricultural products should be designated for GMO labelling, which institution would examine agricultural products for the labelling and which measures would be used to decide what is GM food.
The ministry official was further cited as saying it was likely one or two products such as soybeans and/or corn would be designated for the labelling and that the state-run National Agricultural Product Quality Management Service would be in charge of examining the GM food.
South Korea's annual demand for soybeans in 1998 totaled 1.644 million tonnes and 90.5 percent of the total demand was imported, data from the country's agriculture ministry showed.
The data also showed that the country's annual demand for corn in 1998 was 7.496 million tonnes and that 98.8 percent of the total demand was imported.
