The government vowed Monday to strengthen its crackdown on violators of the country-of-origin labeling rules amid growing concerns about Japanese fishery products contaminated by radioactive materials.
The move followed reports that fishery products imported from Japan are being sold with a label stating Korean as the origin, ahead of the Chuseok or Korean Thanksgiving Day, which falls on Sept. 19.
Officials from related ministries have formed inspection teams to carry out an intensive crackdown on violators of the labeling rules for about two weeks, starting from Monday.
“We will make continuous efforts to protect consumers’ rights so that they can choose the food they eat without being deceived,” a government official said. “Especially, we will take a closer look at fishery products from Japan amid growing concerns over their radiation contamination.”
The teams consist of officials from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Security and Public Administration, Customs Service and municipal governments and district offices, he said.
The country has expanded the country-of-origin labeling rules as traces of radioactive materials from Japanese products have been detected after the radiation leak at its Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011.
Under the labeling rules, restaurant owners and merchants are required to label agricultural and fishery items to show where they were produced.
But concerns are growing as seafood contaminated by radiation leaks from the Fukushima nuclear plant has been recently found in the local market but some of them are being sold with labels with wrong origins.
According to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, about 3,000 tons of fish requested for import declaration has been found to contain radioactive cesium since March 11, 2011.
But the ministry has downplayed the health impact of those fishery products, arguing that the level of radiation detected from them is too low to cause problems.
However, the government will strengthen its monitoring of seafood imported from Japan to examine the level of their radiation contamination.
Meanwhile, the government will also announce the level of radiation contamination of the South Sea before Chuseok, a week earlier than it was originally planned, as there are also growing concerns over the aftereffects of the 2011 disaster in the neighboring country.
In fact, the Tokyo Electric Power Company has recently acknowledged that there is chronic leaking of radiation-tainted underground water into the Pacific Ocean.
