February 28, 2007

South Korea to adopt DNA tests on imported rice, beef

South Korea plans to fully adopt a DNA screening test on imported agricultural products in late March to prevent illegal distribution through fraudulent labelling, the state-run agricultural produce quality control agency said yesterday.

The National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service said its decision to conduct DNA tests was prompted by a growing number of cases of cheap imports, particularly rice and beef, being fraudulently labelled as homegrown goods.

Prices of domestic agricultural goods have been rising along with growing demand for the local goods believed to be fresher and of higher quality than some imports.

The agency said it has identified the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers that could identify 30 types of Chinese rice that are difficult to differentiate from Korean rice. The NAQS said the remaining 50 types will be catalogued for reference by the end of this year.

The agency noted that once all SNP markers are catalogued, the tests will be able to identify Chinese imports with 80 to 90 percent accuracy.

Since Korea began selling foreign rice in April 2006, the NAQS said it found that 23 out of 24 cases of fraudulent labelling involved Chinese rice. Rice from China is 40 percent cheaper than locally grown rice. There have also been cases of mixing Chinese and Korean rice.

Korea signed a rice deal with nine exporting countries in late 2004, as part of the continuation of the Uruguay Round. Under the agreement, Seoul imported 225,000 tonnes of the staple grain last year, and must import 245,990 tonnes this year.

On November 23, 2005 the National Assembly ratified the rice bill which calls for Seoul to raise its rice import quota to 7.96 percent of its total domestic consumption by 2014 from 4 percent with nine rice-exporting countries. In return, Korea received a 10-year grace period for implementing tariffs on rice, a continuation of the 1994 WTO

 Uruguay Round agreement.

The crackdown on import labelling will also include beef. The DNA test will be applied to foreign beef within the year, the NAQS said. Experts are expected to develop special detection markers that will allow inspectors to detect whether the meat is from homegrown cattle or imported cattle with 90 percent accuracy.