LMO/GMO의 표시제도에 관한 법적 문제

Abstract

Living modified organisms or LMOs (including genetically modified agricultural and fishery products, and genetically modified foods) need to be not only controlled in their production and distribution to protect public health and safe diet, but also regulated on their “labeling” system to uphold consumers’ right to know and to take precautionary measures. In this regard, “The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety” stipulates the labeling system in Article 18, and, in order to observe the international regulation, Korea also enacted and implemented “Transboundary Movement Etc. of Living Modified Organisms Act,” which dictates a related labeling system with its focus on the development, production and import states of LMOs. Even before the Act took effect, however, Korea had already established regulations on labeling some genetically modified agricultural and fishery products and genetically modified foods by a set of laws, such as the Agricultural Products Quality Control Act, Quality Control of Fishery Products Act and Food Sanitation Act. As such, the labeling system about LMOs and GMO products has been regulated by multiple laws, each law adopts different terms, regulation targets and mechanisms and thus it is necessary to thoroughly examine different terms of each law and the relationships between different laws in order to understand the LMOs/GMO products labeling system. Therefore, this paper examined how different laws define living modified organism and what legal issues they have about relevant regulations, and proposed measures to improve the system.