Promotion of Pilot Special Cases for Pet Facial Recognition Registration... Including Makgeolli Traditional Liquor

Holding Agricultural and Food Regulatory Reform Strategy Meeting, Selecting 35 First-Phase Regulatory Improvement Tasks

[Asia Economy Sejong=Reporter Kim Hyewon] The government will temporarily exempt regulations to allow the use of facial recognition technology when registering companion animals. Additionally, the Traditional Liquor Industry Act will be amended to include Makgeolli as a traditional liquor.

On the 14th, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs held the 1st Agricultural and Food Regulatory Reform Strategy Meeting and selected 35 regulatory improvement tasks including these contents. Since launching the dedicated agricultural and food regulatory reform team on June 20, the ministry has identified regulatory improvement tasks through over 40 on-site meetings.

The selected tasks are divided into four areas: ▲ easing entry barriers to activate startups ▲ establishing special criteria for new technology introduction ▲ improving management conditions and boosting vitality ▲ simplifying administrative procedures to resolve field difficulties.

First, to activate startups in the agricultural sector, smart crop cultivation facilities will be added to the list of temporary alternative uses of farmland, and installation of smart crop cultivation facilities within agricultural promotion zones will be permitted if certain conditions are met.

When young farmers acquire their first farmland and take out loans from financial institutions, the Agricultural and Fishery Credit Guarantee Fund (Nongshinbo) will support up to 300 million KRW. Furthermore, the limit for the farming inheritance deduction will be increased from the current 2 billion KRW to 3 billion KRW to promote farming succession. To this end, the ministry plans to coordinate with the Ministry of Economy and Finance by the end of the year to push for amendments to the Inheritance and Gift Tax Act.

As part of promoting the introduction of new technologies, regulations related to companion animal registration will also be temporarily exempted. Specifically, in addition to the internal and external wireless identification device methods, a demonstration special case for facial recognition registration will be applied until the end of next year. Based on this, related enforcement plans will be prepared in 2024, and the Enforcement Rules of the Animal Protection Act will be amended. A demonstration special case will also be applied to mobile companion animal cremation services, with related enforcement plans to be prepared by 2024. Under the current Animal Protection Act, animal funeral service providers must have facilities and personnel such as standalone buildings.

In the fourth quarter of this year, the Traditional Liquor Industry Act will be amended to separate regional specialty liquors from traditional liquors and include Makgeolli. Regional specialty liquors will be separately defined to establish an industrial base.

To improve the management conditions of farms, the clause 'at least one direct payment between 2017 and 2019' in the basic direct payment land eligibility requirements under the Public Interest Direct Payment Act will be deleted. Through this, about 560,000 actual cultivators who had been excluded from payment eligibility are expected to receive direct payments.

Additionally, in consultation with the Ministry of Justice, a new detailed service industry category for restaurants will be established to allow employment of foreigners holding non-professional employment visas (E-9), expanding the introduction of foreign labor.

From the perspective of simplifying administrative procedures, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs will push for legal amendments to allow replacement of livestock breeding restrictions and closure orders for violations of the Livestock Infectious Disease Prevention Act with fines. The related notification will also be amended to allow quarantine exemption decisions before arrival at quarantine locations if there are no document issues when importing recombinant proteins, the raw materials for biopharmaceuticals.

The ministry plans to promptly implement regulatory improvements that can be handled internally and discuss tasks requiring inter-ministerial coordination with the Regulatory Reform Promotion Team of the Office for Government Policy Coordination and the Economic Regulatory Innovation Task Force of the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

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