hankyoreh

Investigation started Friday of a pork supplier in Gyeonggi Province on suspicion of its role in a massive outbreak of food poisoning at school cafeterias in the region.

The unidentified company is one of the nation’s leading secondary pork suppliers, sources said. Inspectors from Gyeonggi provincial government, food and drug authorities and the agriculture ministry suspect the firm of having provided meat that might have caused the food poisoning, which occurred at 22 schools in Seoul and surrounding provinces.

According to latest estimates, around 1,500 students are suffering from nausea and diarrhea due to the nation's worse case of food poisoning.

An official from the Korea Food and Drug Administration said, "The firm is the only pork meat supplier for CJ Food System," which was the company in charge of the school cafeteria meals. The official added that the investigation team has taken meat believed to be produced on the day when the food poisoning took place and is analyzing the sample.

CJ Food System is South Korea’s largest food distributor, running school cafeterias around the nation. After the incident, it suspended all of its operations.

Experts attribute the food poisoning incident to the current business climate between main food distributors such as CJ Food and secondary suppliers.

For example, under the current system, suppliers participate in bidding wars for contracts with the distributors, causing them to in some cases to do whatever it takes to reduce costs.

CJ Food introduced a bidding system for agricultural materials last year. The bidding takes place every 15 days and once the price is fixed, it is maintained until the next bidding session.

Since the new system was introduced, some have said that the level of food quality supplied have gotten worse.

Previously, CJ Food evaluated food suppliers before selecting the final bidder by comparing their qualifications. That safeguard has since apparently been removed.

Another practice that might have had a hand in the poisoning outbreak is that major food distributors often ask their secondary suppliers to provide what they need on extremely short notice.

Orders are usually made just 5-6 hours in advance, not giving suppliers enough time to follow through on cleanliness and safety standards, experts said.

In additon, many major distributors transfer losses or extra costs to their suppliers, causing more financial burden on, in most cases, already cash-strapped companies, the experts added. This, they said, could lead to a dangerous cutting of costs.