Last August, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety(MFDS) and the Ministry of Agriculture,  Food and Rural Affairs(MAFRA) conducted a complete investigation of egg farms. A total of 1,239 eggs were inspected, and pesticides were detected in 52 eggs. Park Ho-gyeong(’14, Dept. of Sociology) said, “There is almost no food that doesn’t contain eggs, but a pesticide has been detected in the eggs. Accordingly, I am afraid to eat eggs in the future.” As eggs are a favorite food for many people, peopleʼs anxieties and fears about pesticide contamination have grown.
  How did the eggs become contaminated with pesticides? Generally, chickens spread sand on their feet or rub their bodies on the ground to remove harmful pests from their bodies. However, most domestic egg farms breed chickens densely in cages where the chicken can’t walk or move. Thus, chickens in cages are not be able to remove the pests themselves. Therefore, farmers artificially spray pesticide to remove parasitic pests to increase the egg production rate. At that time, the pesticide penetrates the eggs.
  In the process of coping with the pesticide-contaminated eggs, problems with the government were revealed. In August, 31 out of the 52 farms that broke the food safety regulations were environment-friendly farms. Since 1999, the Korean government has used the Environment-Friendly Agricultural Products Certification System, and only farms that are well-managed throughout the entire processes of production and distribution are certificated as environment-friendly farms. However, the discovery of pesticides on products from environment-friendly farms indicates that there is a problem with the Environment-Friendly Agricultural Products Certification System. In 1999, when the system was introduced, the National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service(NAQS) took complete control. However, since 2002, private certification agencies began to participate, and private certification agencies have taken charge of all certifications since June, 2017. The government only monitors whether the certification work is handled properly. Private certification agencies didn’t thoroughly certify eco-friendly agricultural products. Also, when people from NAQS were re-employed at private certification agencies, the certification process was weakened more and more due to the collaboration between them. In other words, the process of certifying environment-friendly agricultural products by private certification agencies lost transparency. Therefore, the National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service didn’t manage the process properly. Thus, harmful pesticide components were later detected in products from environment-friendly farms.
  Last September, the government carried out collection tests on distributed eggs in cooperation with local governments in order to review the results of the complete inventories. However, two farm’s eggs that passed the safety regulation in the previous investigation were found to contain pesticides not allowed in Korea. This is because the government conducted the complete investigation over a period of three days in order to quickly recover from the previous contamination scandal. In other words, they were so obsessed with quick results that the information sharing between the ministries was not done properly. As a result, the investigation was not done correctly.
  Choi Kyung-chul, a professor in the Dept. of Veterinary Medicine, said, “Securing the stability of foods for the people is of the utmost importance. I think the following improvements should be made in order to prevent this situation. First, we should minimize the use of pesticides from cage housings in order to create an animal-friendly environment. However, in the case of animal breeding, it is inevitable the price of chickens and eggs will increase because more land is needed. Therefore, more deliberation is needed to solve this issue. Second, it is essential to supplement the Environment-friendly Agricultural Products Certification System. In order to do this, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points(HACCP) should also be strengthened. Finally, in order to eliminate the confusion that occurred in the early stages of the contamination, it is necessary to strengthen the initial response capability by unifying information among the ministries.

By Jung Jun-hoe
jh38@cbnu.ac.kr