This study was conducted to investigate the consumers' recognition and information need for food safety, especially focused on pesticide residues, foodborne illness, and food additives. The data were collected from 350 adults living in Taegu and Pusan by the self-administered questionnaire. Frequencies and chi-square tests were conducted by SPSS. The results of the survey were as follows: (1) the consumers' concerns about food safety were high, (2) many respondents worried about eating vegetables, fruits and grains in turn because of pesticide residues, and did not trust the results from food-safety tests, (3) the major factor for foodborne illness was regarded as unfreshed or contaminated food stuffs, (4) many consumers concerned highly about preservatives among food additives, and tried to consume food containing less food additives, and (5) many respondents wanted to get the information about harmfulness of pesticide residues in foods, method to choose fresh food, and safety of food additives.

A survey was conducted to investigate the attitudes of the food specialist to the food developed by gene recombination. The mail survey was distributed to 1,400 food specialists and received 464, a response rate of 33.1%. Respondents were asked about knowledge, concerns of potential hazards, purchasing and labeling of the gene recombination foods. Most respondents (98.7%) have some knowledge on the gene recombination foods. 91.3% of respondents recognized necessity of gene recombination technology. However, they also point out its potential hazards (80.9%). The groups with less knowledge showed their increased worry on the hazard in comparison with ones of having more knowledge(p$lt;0.01). The result indicated that there was negative relationship between knowledge and worry on the gene recombination foods. The groups with more knowledge showed their increased purchasing on gene recombination foods in comparison with ones of having less knowledge(p$lt;0.01). The result indicated that there was positive relationship between their purchase intent for gene recombination foods and knowledge. 68.4% of respondents showed their interest on purchasing the gene recombination foods. In this group, most of them (44.9%) has on condition that low cost (27.0%). In addition, they also have not use the foods for their children (17.9%) if they buy it. Most respondents (85.3%) want labeling on the gene recombination foods.

Safety of present food has been accepted on the basis of extensive use and experience for a long time. Many food resources have been developed by traditional techniques without any significant adverse impacts on the safety of food. Recently recombinant DNA techniques are being used to develop new food resources. These techniques enable developers to make specific genetic modifications in food resources that introduce substances that could not be introduced by traditional methods. With these techniques food resources are being to resist pests and disease, to tolerate herbicides, and to have improved characteristics for food preservation and nutritional contents. Because the properties of an organism result from interaction between biochemical pathways controlled by many genes, the genes conferring these traits usually encode directly responsible proteins for the new trait as well as proteins that indirectly modify carbohydrates or lipids in food. Therefore, this kind of food is regarded as new food that has not been existed before, and the safety of the food developed by recombinant DNA techniques should be evaluated upon scientific basis. In this paper, the issues upon safety of the food developed by gene manipulation are discussed in terms of composional changes that can be introduced, potential food safety harzards that might arise, present status of safety regulations in various countries and international organizations, and suggestions for the safety regulation in Korea.

This study was conducted to find out the proper ways of implementation of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) concepts applicable to the current Korean food inspection system. The following recommendations are based on an in-depth review of the Canadian Food Safety Enhancement Program (FSEP), which is one of the leading HACCP programs adapted to the food industry. Since 1997, the HACCP system has been voluntarily applied to meat processing plants in Korea in accordance with the Food Protection Law. But the guidelines are obscure and inadequate to expand to the diversity of food plants, and are therefore only applied to a limited number of plants of small scale enterprise. For these reasons, it is necessary to prepare an enhanced food safety control program focused not only on the HACCP plants but also on the non-HACCP plants. The national program should be the fundamental framework of a food safety control policy enforced by all the relevant authorities. The Prerequiste Program of Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures (SSOP) of FSIS are good example programs for the non-HACCP plants. These programs, which are a major part of the HACCP system, could easily be adapted to the Korean food industry. To improve the current HACCP implementation guideline, it is necessary to develop a detailed implementation manual, generic HACCP model, training program, and an audit program.

A survey was conducted to investigate the attitudes of public officials related to food hygiene toward food safety. The official groups were divided into four sub-groups based on their area, agency, gender and age. Response of each group to the survey was statistically analysed. The survey's results showed that most of them (87.0%) were satisfied with a domestic level of food hygiene. But, some of them (29.8%) considered unsatisfactoryly on safety of the food they eat. Their response to food safety did not statistically significant between each group of area, agency and age but, in case of gender, female group showed stastically more negative attitude to food safety than male one (P$lt;0.05). All groups chose residues of chemical substances such as pesticides and food additives as the most potential food risk factor followed by foodborne pathogens, heavy metals and animal drug residues. The results are not consistent with the scientific judgement. Therefore, more education and information were needed for these groups. They pointed out food manufacturer as a responsible group for poor food hygiene (48.7%). In addition, food manufacture and processing were selected as main business types with the lowest level in the food hygiene but official, working in the area of the central government and Seoul metropolitan city, pointed out food services establishments as the poorest hygiene one (P$lt;0.01). This result suggested that education and information to let mind of responded groups change, working in this part, and governmental financial support are needed to improve hygiene level of food manufacture and processing (70.3%). They also chose HACCP as the most effective way for improving the level of food hygiene followed by Recall, PL (Product Liability), monitoring, labeling and increasing of number of company with good manufacture and processing (GMP).

Foodborne diseases are serious problems throughout the world, because new pathogens have emerged. Nowadays many students eat school lunch provided by school lunch program. They are threatened by pathogens transmitted by foods. Many school children became victims of foodborne diseases. Most foodborne outbreaks were caused by mishandling foods at food service establishments. Temperature control is the most critical point of keeping the foods safe. In order to prevent foodborne diseases in schools, the managers in charge of school lunch program and officials in charge of food safety of local health department try to make sure that foods are out of danger zone of temperature. Prevention of cross contamination, and sanitization of raw foods and utensils are also emphasized by school lunch program managers and health officials.

The contents of articles on food safety and policy in the Donga and Chosun Ilbo from January 1960 to June 1996 were analyzed for the evaluation of subjects and trends in mass media. Among the total of 490 articles, those on cereals were most frequently appeared (20.0%), followed by the articles on sea foods (10.6%) and meats (10.0%). Articles on fats and oils were the least (2.0%) in frequencies. The proportions of articles classified based on the 10-year interval were 28.0% in the 60's, 28.0% in the 70's, 20.6% in the 80's, and 23.4% in the 90's. Major contents of articles were the safety of imported foods, food contaminations by agricultural chemicals, heavy metals and harmful additives.

Foodborne disease caused by pathogenic bacteria is one of main concerns in food industry. To supply safe food products, chemical and thermal intervention technologies have been widely applied in food industry, however these treatments have their own limitations. The concept of biopreservation has recently received increased attention in response to industrial and consumer demands. The biopreservation technologies mainly include bacteriocin, bacteriophage, bacteriophage-encoded enzymes, and endolysins. Among them, bacteriocins have been widely recognized as a main biopreservative and have also been most studied. Bacteriocins, mainly consisting of antibacterial peptides, may have bactericidal or bacteriostatic effect which could prolong the shelf-life as well as maintain safety of foods. This review article offers a brief research trend about bacteriocins, focusing on microbial food safety. The antimicrobial mechanism of bacteriocins has been discussed and some efforts to inactivate foodborne pathogens have been analyzed in this review article. The challenges facing the application of bacteriocins have also been evaluated. Thus, this review will provide insights for researchers working in bacteriocin as well as industry personnel looking for a new method for fighting foodborne pathogens.

The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of pesticide-related accident on prices and sales of eggs and the perception of food safety accidents among consumers. For this, we analyzed the impact of the pesticide incident on consumers’ purchases by separating large discount stores and eco-friendly specialty stores with econometrics methods. In addition, the value changes for each egg certification were analyzed after the accident. Perception of food safety accidents was conducted through a survey to investigate the awareness of the pesticiderelated accidents, changes in purchases, and the causes of the pesticide accidents. Furthermore, the risk analysis was conducted. This results show the importance of trust and communication in food safety accidents between distributors, consumers and concerned authorities. Also, after the accident, consumers’ interest and premium exist in the breeding process such as animal welfare, not only in the final product. Therefore in order to actively respond to food safety accidents such as pesticidesrelated accident, response and improvement are necessary considering various aspects such as risk assessment, risk management, and risk communication.

In this study, the clinical safety and toxicology of oral ingestion of supplement capsules containing ginsengradix was investigated in healthy young volunteers. This study was a pilot randomized, double blinded, placebo controlledtrial. The healthy volunteers were divided into 6 groups of 20 each (10males and 10 females). They took the ginseng powderfor 35 days (3g/day) for safety evaluation. There were measured general healthy levels such as hematological, biochemical andelectrocardiographic parameters. After the first week, besides Korean white ginseng the other treatments led to an significantincrease of white blood cells. Korean red ginseng increased UREA (blood urea nitrogen) in healthy volunteers, but it didn’texceed the range of normal values, and in the subsequent process of treatment there is no effect of elevating UREA. After thethree weeks, Korean white ginseng showed relatively low the content of blood glucose and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol.After the five weeks, compared with the other treatments, Korean red ginseng increased white blood cells, platelet distributionwidth and average volume of platelet. Korean white ginseng decreased low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. American ginsengdecreased blood creatinine in healthy volunteers. In conclusion, through test the blood routine, urine routine, liver function,renal function, blood glucose, blood lipid and electrocardiogram, the healthy volunteers continuous taking ginsengfor 35 days (3g/day) is safe and reliable, and have no obvious adverse reactions and side effects.

Even though consumers’ concern about food-safety certified or environment-friendly chicken meat becomes one of the main issues of food consumption in Korea, university students’ interest about food-safety certified or environment-friendly chicken meat was not often discussed. We realized that the cafeteria of university is one of the largest consumption points for the chicken meat of university students, and tried to analyze university students’ consumption of food-safety certified or environment-friendly chicken meat at the cafeterias of university. The object of this paper is to conduct survey analysis about the students' behavior for consumption of food-safety certified or environment-friendly chicken meat at the cafeterias of university and to measure WTP(Willingness-to-pay) for the food cooked with foodsafety certified or environment-friendly chicken meat. The results present that most of students show higher preference of environment-friendly chicken meat than food-safety certified chicken meat, and that they can pay 1,329.9 Korean won for food cooked with environment-friendly chicken meat.