MFDS Joint Inspection of School and Kindergarten Cafeterias... 38 Sites Including Seoul High School and Sangmun High School Caught

[Asia Economy Reporter Seo So-jeong] Contracted catering companies for Sangmun High School, Seoul High School, Seocho High School, Banpo High School, and others in Seoul were massively caught during a joint inspection by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. These companies were found to have stored products past their expiration dates or violated the obligation to store preserved food.

On the 20th, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (Commissioner Kim Gang-rip) announced that, in preparation for the spring semester, it conducted hygiene inspections from February 24 to March 24 on a total of 10,520 collective catering facilities with a high risk of food poisoning, including schools and kindergartens, in cooperation with local governments and education offices, and found 38 places violating the "Food Sanitation Act."

The main violations were ▲storage of expired products (20 places) ▲failure to conduct health examinations (8 places) ▲violation of hygienic handling standards (3 places) ▲failure to store preserved food (3 places) ▲violation of facility standards (3 places), etc.

In particular, a large number of violations were detected at a high school located in Seocho-gu, Seoul. A Ministry of Food and Drug Safety official said, "Collective catering facilities are required to store cooked food for six days, but it was confirmed that they either did not store it or stored products past their expiration dates," adding, "Administrative measures such as fines will be taken."

The facilities caught this time will be subject to administrative measures by the relevant local governments, and re-inspected within three months to check for improvements.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety explained that it collected 1,999 samples of cooked food, cooking utensils, and processed finished products provided in the catering, and tested for food poisoning bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus. Of the 1,512 samples tested so far, all were found to be suitable. The remaining 487 samples are still under examination.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety stated, "We will continue to regularly inspect collective catering facilities and food ingredient suppliers with a high risk of food poisoning to ensure food hygiene safety in collective catering facilities."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.