Hygiene Inspections at School and Kindergarten Cafeterias... Total of 56 Places Caught

Group meal service facilities within schools and kindergartens that violated relevant laws, such as storing expired food products or failing to conduct health checkups, were collectively detected.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced on the 21st that, in cooperation with local governments and education offices, it inspected group meal service facilities in schools and kindergartens, as well as cooking and sales businesses within children's food safety protection zones, and found 56 violating establishments. This inspection targeted a total of 43,978 locations, including 10,587 group meal service facilities and food ingredient suppliers, and 33,391 school convenience stores and nearby snack shops.

Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. [Image source=Yonhap News]

By type, 40 were kindergarten and school group meal service facilities and food ingredient suppliers, and 16 were cooking and sales businesses of children's preferred foods. The main violations included ▲ storing products past their consumption (expiration) date (20 locations) ▲ failure to conduct health checkups (14 locations) ▲ violation of hygienic handling standards (10 locations) ▲ failure to store preserved food (6 locations) ▲ violation of labeling standards (1 location). The detected establishments will be subject to administrative actions by the relevant authorities.

After measures are taken, group meal service facilities will be re-inspected within three months, and dedicated managers will continuously monitor cooking and sales businesses of children's preferred foods to verify improvements.

Additionally, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety noted that norovirus food poisoning cases tend to be high from early winter to June, early summer, and urged thorough hygiene management during cooking at group meal service facilities mainly used by children and adolescents to prevent food poisoning. They also requested adherence to food poisoning prevention guidelines, such as refraining from participating in cooking when symptoms suspected of food poisoning occur.

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