Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA), Minister Lee Dong-phil said that problems from the pilot project since October 2012 have been addressed.

The previous law, ‘Act on the Traceability of Cattle and Beef,’ has fully been amended as to include other livestock and products, such as pork, into the scope of the law.

A year after the amendment the new traceability act took effect.

The traceability is designed to identify causes of any potential issues regarding pork, and to provide prompt measures to collect and discharge the problematic meat if or when necessary by recording information of trade stages from breeding to sales.

The traceability will enable authorities to trace the pork trade and to provide consumers with information about Korean pork including locations of pork breeders, dates of butchery, butchery inspection results and profiles of packaging companies.

At the breeding stage, every Korean pork breeder nationwide should report its breeding status at the end of each month to the traceability system.

Breeders also have to fill in Farm Identification Numbers (Individual Identification Numbers in the case of breeding pigs) whenever their pigs are transferred to other farms or butchery houses.

The same reporting requirements are given to breeding pigs as cattle when they are registered or transferred through the market. This enables authorities to manage traceability of individual pigs.

The ministry said that traceability management will be more efficient by the farm identification number, taking the efficiency of workforce and budgets into account, since it requires less time to raise pigs and pigs usually have more offspring.