On August 28, 2018, I participated in a roundtable discussion and spoke at a conference in South Korea sponsored by the National Food Safety Information Service (NFSI). As best as I can tell, this conference was the first in South Korea. The roundtable provided an excellent opportunity for me to listen first-hand to concerns about food regulation in South Korea. The conference included academics working with NFSI as well as South Korean government officials. My assigned topic at the conference was Consolidation of Food Safety Regulation: Historical and Contemporary Considerations. My presentation addressed the current Trump proposal on June 21, 2018, to consolidate the administration of food safety regulation into the USDA and to rename FDA to Federal Drug Administration. This issue is very pertinent to South Korea, where there exists a high degree of fragmentation of food safety regulation.
NFSI is funded by the South Korean government. The organization comprises experts (mostly PhDs) who work closely with the Korean FDA and other agencies with jurisdiction over food safety regulation in Korea. I enjoyed getting to know officials of NFSI: Yun-Hee Chung, the President; Joohyung Lee, the Department Manager; and Soyoung Gwon, a Principal Researcher.
I very much appreciated the gracious hospitality of our hosts and look forward to further interaction with NFSI and others in South Korea in the pursuit of good governance of food.
On Food Law 