Government legislation ministry rules on factory area calculation for slaughterhouses

The Ministry of Legislation said Tuesday that the building area limit for new or expanded slaughterhouse facilities in natural conservation zones refers to factory building area under industrial cluster laws, resolving a query from Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province.

Under the Act on the Promotion of Industrial Clusters and the Establishment of Factories, establishing or expanding factories with a factory building area of 500 square meters or more is generally prohibited in natural conservation zones. Exceptions allow specific facilities, including slaughterhouses, provided their building area remains within 5,000 square meters.

The ministry determined that the term building area used in these exceptions carries the same meaning as factory building area defined in the enforcement decree: the sum of floor areas on each story installed with machinery for manufacturing and the horizontal projection area of outdoor works used for production. This interpretation aligns the calculation method for permitted exceptions with the standard used to enforce the general prohibition.

Interpreting the term as total floor area under the Building Act would reduce the allowable scale for new facilities without explicit regulatory basis, the ministry said. The Building Act defines total floor area as the sum of floor spaces on all stories.

Officials observed that the enforcement decree uses both factory building area and building area when specifying allowed scales for different factory types. While local neighborhood factories and advanced industry plants are regulated by factory building area, slaughterhouses were listed using only building area. The ministry recommended revising the law to unify these terms.