Gwangju Health and Environment Research Institute Strengthens Livestock Product 'Safety and Hygiene' Ahead of Chuseok Holiday

Special Livestock Product Hygiene Inspection Period Until the 18th

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Yoon Jamin] The Gwangju Metropolitan City Health and Environment Research Institute has stepped up safety and hygiene measures ahead of the Chuseok holiday, when livestock product consumption increases.

The Gwangju Health Institute announced on the 2nd that it has designated the period until the 18th as the "Special Measures Period for Livestock Product Hygiene Inspection" and is strengthening inspections of livestock products produced at slaughterhouses within the city.

During this special measures period, strict slaughter inspections will be conducted on slaughterhouse hygiene management and animals for shipment, and residue inspections on meat will be directly carried out on-site using the "rapid inspection equipment" introduced to slaughterhouses since last year.

In addition, the frequency of microbial and residue inspections on meat will be increased from once a week to twice a week, significantly enhancing the safety inspections of livestock products.

The average daily cattle slaughter volume in Gwangju was 43 heads in 2019 and 44 heads in 2020, and during the special measures period for the Chuseok holiday, it increased by 26% and 27% compared to usual, reaching 54 heads and 56 heads respectively.

In particular, last year, despite expectations that the usual workload would decrease compared to the previous year due to the impact of COVID-19, the volume slightly increased due to increased household meat consumption and the rise in delivery of livestock product gift sets.

Accordingly, the city’s Health and Environment Research Institute expects that the slaughter volume will increase by more than 30% compared to usual this year as well, with the increase in delivery volumes of gift sets, and is making every effort to ensure thorough hygiene inspections.

Kim Yonghwan, Director of the Animal Hygiene Testing Laboratory, said, "We will do our best to provide healthy food to citizens."

Meanwhile, during the Chuseok holiday special measures period last year (three weeks), the city’s Health and Environment Research Institute conducted slaughter inspections on a total of 13,729 heads, preemptively detecting and blocking 7 cases of non-compliant livestock and livestock products from circulating in the market, and conducted residue and microbial inspections on 134 cases of meat, all of which were found to be compliant.

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