By Jane Han
Staff Reporter
If you feel you're seeing more and more Chinese imports like pepper and black sesame on the local market, you're right. To be more exact, about six times more than 10 years ago.
Annual food imports from China recorded 66,920 cases of 3.237 million tons in 2005, up 6.4 times than the amount in 1995 (10,393 cases totaling 356,000 tons) when the World Trade Organization (WTO) was created, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA) said Sunday.
The jump was made evident with the presence of Chinese goods taking up 11 percent in cases and 3.7 percent in weight in 1995 to 31.1 percent and 28.8 percent in cases and weight, respectively, in 2005, of the total imported food market.
The figures came from an analysis of Korea Food & Drug Administration (KFDA) data.
Along with the import growth also came a hike in products that fell short of the inspection guidelines.
While there were 90 cases of goods that failed the review in 1995, the number rose to 338 in 2003, 325 in 2004 and 320 in 2005.
``Considering the total increase in imports, the number failing the inspection actually declined,'' said the KIAHSA researcher. ``But more Chinese products have been called delinquent recently, so countermeasures are a must.''
The KFDA said in 2005 that 94 percent of total imported food products failing inspection were from China, and similar food safety issues came about lately with Chinese Royal Jelly containing prohibited antibiotics.
According to the KIHASA, the major reasons for holding back some exports were the detection of bacteria and germs, excessive amounts of additives and violations of other safety standards.