Agriculture ministry renames direct-trade certification as "designation"

South Korea's agriculture ministry on Monday replaced the certification system for outstanding direct-trade agricultural businesses with a designation system, part of a clean-up of subordinate rules that follow an amendment to the law promoting direct trade. The change takes effect on the day of promulgation, according to the enforcement rule for the law on promoting the use of regional agricultural produce and activating direct agricultural trade.

A business that was "certified" under the old rule is now "designated", and the terms attached to each step of the process — the application form, the review, the review plan, the certificate, changes to a business's registration and renewal — move with it. Renewal becomes "re-designation", and the marks a business displays and the files the review bodies keep are renamed to match. The review institutions themselves become designation bodies, along with the applications they file and the work rules they must keep.

The change follows the parent law, which was revised and took effect on Oct. 22. The enforcement rule now aligns its forms and tables to the new wording, including the standards in the annexes that set out what qualifies a business for the label.

The rule, promulgated as Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Ordinance No. 798, also widens a reference to local government. In two provisions covering the application process and the conduct of reviews, the provisions now name the mayor of an integrated special city alongside the mayor of a special city, and an integrated special city alongside a special city.

The designation system the rule now regulates dates to 2017, when the government began screening direct-trade businesses on how much of their stock is local produce and how they handle food safety. The rule does not change those underlying criteria; it changes what the state calls the status it confers and which bodies issue and oversee it.