Felony Charges for Food Offenders

The law governing food products will be changed, and those who purposely produce harmful food will be punished on felony charges, and the lower limit for punishment will be created while the fine penalty will no longer exist.

The ruling Uri Party decided to amend the food and sanitation law to reflect the “garbage bun stuffing” case after an urgent meeting with the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Law. The current law puts harmful food producers in prison for less than seven years or may only impose a fine of less than 100 million won on those criminals.

The food and sanitation law will be also changed to release the list of companies breaking the law, and the consumer-oriented law will be newly created.

As the first measure, the ruling Uri Party decided to have the Food and Drug Administration Agency release the list of enterprises which were caught selling disposable pickled radish, the names of 29 businesses which produced dried radish and dumplings from these raw materials, and the level of relevance of these businesses to the case.

Meanwhile, the “dumpling case” is spreading as some large corporations are believed to have purchased these garbage dumplings.

“We confirmed that Company A purchased garbage bun stuffing from Supplier W, manufactured dumplings and sold them to some large corporations under the Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) contracts,” Jun Hyun-soo, director at the Monitoring Department of the Food and Drug Administration said.

“It is not uncommon that some large corporations which do not have huge facilities for dumpling production purchase dumplings from middle enterprises under OEM contracts,” the officer in the foreign affairs department of the police headquarters said.

The Food and Drug Administration Agency is still investigating into other large corporations which were highly suspected to have purchased dumplings in the same manner.

The Food and Drug Administration will announce the list of the corrupt businesses and the measures to be taken on June 10. “Even though radishes purchased from Company W were used in the production process of Company A from August to December 1999, the garbage law materials were not applied after we concluded that the quality of those materials were substantially low upon performing the internal inspection in January 2000,” the disclosed large corporations stated.

The large corporation further explained, “The pickled radishes were not bad enough to be called ‘garbage’ as far as we know.”

As “bad quality dumpling” were said to have been distributed to some large corporations, Lotte Department Store, Shinsege Department store, E-mart, and Lotte Mart made an announcement on June 9 stating that they have withdrawn all dumpling products from their stores nationwide. These distributors said, “This measure was taken because dumpling sales have dropped to one-tenth of the regular level, and no one knows which brand caused the problem,” and added, “We will have trouble selling dumplings until every single business which used garbage stuffing is identified.”

Meanwhile, the police announced that it will create task forces at each police station and regional agency, initiating intensive crackdown for offenders who illegally produce and sell harmful food, with the Food and Drug Administration Agency and non-governmental organizations starting from June 9 until July 8.