원산지판정기준에 대한 소비자인식 연구 - 커피 제품을 중심으로 -

Abstract

This study has been conducted to examine the legal grounds of criteria for the determination of origin and the problems related to applying the criteria to individual items—especially coffee products. In addition, it has investigated the consumer perception towards these criteria, in order to suggest measures to prevent any confusion and damage of consumers and provide more accurate information on the country of origin. First of all, the result of examining the relevant laws dealing with criteria for the determination of origin has shown that they have some ambiguity in terms of interpretation, which causes difficulties in determining the country of origin. Also, they seem to create a result that the country of origin can be different depending on in which country the coffee beans are processed. These laws include the Customs Act, the Foreign Trade Act, and the Act on Country-of-origin Labeling for Agricultural & Fishery Products. Meanwhile, a survey has been carried out on the perception of consumers towards the need for the labeling of the country of origin and the criteria for the determination of origin. Among 500 consumers who participated in the survey, both men and women older than 20 years living in one of the seven metropolitan cities of Korea, 95% said that they think the country-of-origin labeling system for coffee products is necessary, and over 70% said that they want to see both coffee bean producing country and coffee bean processing country on the label, regardless of whether the two countries are the same or not. Also, 82% of the respondents said that they are not aware of the change in the criteria for the determination of origin for coffee products, i.e., the country of origin is not the coffee bean producing country any more but the coffee bean processing country. They have expressed their concern related to the possibility of taking the coffee bean processing country for the coffee bean producing country, and the fact that it is hard to know which country the coffee beans originally came from. Therefore, many consumers seemed to think that the definition of the country of origin should be clearly specified so that there is no misunderstanding on the concept, and maybe it is better to label both coffee bean producing country and coffee bean processing country for further clarification. Based on this review, this study has suggested some improvement measures. That is, in the case of products which involve more than two countries in the production process such as coffee, it seems more desirable to indicate both producing country and processing country respectively on the label, while applying the unified criteria for the determination of origin for the same product items regardless of whether they were processed domestically or not.