03/01/2026
📰🚨 South Korea’s MAFRA Announces the 3rd Comprehensive Animal Welfare Plan
👉 https://koreandogs.org/3rd-comprehensive-animal-welfare-plan/
On February 27, 2025, South Korea’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) announced its 3rd Comprehensive Animal Welfare Plan, outlining broad reforms to strengthen animal protection, improve enforcement, and advance a more humane and responsible society. Below is the English translation of the briefing:
Hello. I am Park Jeong-hoon, Director-General for Animal Welfare and Environment Policy at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA). Nice to meet you.
Today, I will brief you on the 3rd Comprehensive Animal Welfare Plan.
After the briefing, our staff, division directors, and the responsible officers will remain available. If there are questions I cannot answer immediately, they will assist with responses.
Let us begin.
Under the Animal Protection Act, MAFRA establishes and implements a comprehensive plan every five years that outlines the basic direction of national animal welfare policy. Reflecting changes in public awareness and policy needs, we have formulated the third plan this year.
Looking at achievements so far:
We created a bureau-level organization within MAFRA dedicated to overall coordination of animal welfare policy, and with the passage of the Special Act to End Dog Meat Consumption, we moved one step closer to becoming an advanced animal welfare nation.
We have also strengthened penalties and introduced preventive measures against animal abuse and abandonment, while expanding institutional and physical infrastructure—such as improving municipal animal shelters and private protection facilities.
In developing this plan, we held more than 30 meetings and consultative sessions with animal protection groups, industry stakeholders, and experts. We made every effort to listen to and incorporate voices from the field.
After extensive discussions, we set the plan’s core direction as strengthening and stabilizing existing systems so they function effectively in real practice.
We aim to create and spread a culture in which pet guardians, pets, and non-pet owners coexist harmoniously. We will also expand opportunities for private organizations to participate throughout the entire policy cycle—from development to implementation and evaluation—so that voices from the field continue to be reflected.
I will now outline the major components.
1. Strengthening measures to prevent animal abuse, abandonment, and loss, and reinforcing the nationwide animal welfare safety net.
To prevent repeated animal abuse, we will introduce a restriction-on-animal-keeping system as a preventive measure, and we will establish sentencing guidelines to ensure that lenient punishments for animal abuse do not occur.
Cases have arisen where animals are left at veterinary hospitals or pet hotels for long periods without retrieval, or where guardians abandon pets when moving homes. Therefore, we will clarify owner responsibility regarding abandonment and strengthen penalties.
To improve welfare on animal farms, we will prepare standard guidelines for farm animal management that specify universal, practical facility and care standards applicable to general farms.
We will strengthen penalties for illegal distribution of animal welfare-certified livestock products, and expand inspections and training for slaughterhouses and transport vehicles to ensure safe handling.
For animal testing facilities, we will provide tailored consulting based on core principles designed to minimize pain and promote welfare, and reinforce post-inspection and management through external experts.
We will also establish a legal basis for the responsibilities and support for national service animals that perform search, detection, and rescue activities in government agencies. A unified system will be developed to manage retired service dogs—currently handled separately by each agency—and support their adoption into private homes.
Regarding free-roaming cats—an issue with high social conflict—we will expand surveys to identify problem areas and focus TNR operations in densely populated regions. We will also operate community councils involving local governments, “cat moms,” and residents to discuss proper care methods and help ease social tensions.
2. Strengthening policy infrastructure: revitalizing animal registration and enhancing rescue and sheltering capacity.
To address problems such as abandonment, strays, and illegal sales, we will expand mandatory animal registration to all dogs nationwide, gradually eliminating exemption areas.
We also plan to introduce conditions for using biometric identification methods, such as nose-print recognition, to make registration easier.
To enhance the rescue and care capacity for stray and abandoned animals, we will improve the management and operation of municipal animal shelters. Supporting facilities—such as dog training and education areas and community amenities—will be added to improve accessibility, and we will expand the participation of private organizations in shelter operation.
3. Strengthening public-private partnerships in policy promotion and on-site monitoring, and expanding a responsible pet culture through ending dog meat consumption and ensuring pet safety.
Beginning this year, the national Animal Protection Day—a legally designated day—will be organized jointly by MAFRA, local governments, and private groups, with participation from related companies and institutions. We will deliver a unified public message.
To promote responsible care, pre-adoption education for pet guardians will become mandatory. We will also expand animal welfare education in elementary, middle, and high schools to improve society’s sensitivity toward animal welfare.
To ensure smooth implementation of the dog meat ban, we will conduct quarterly field inspections and continue efforts to transition away from dog meat consumption culture.
4. Improving welfare standards in pet industry establishments, enhancing animal medical systems, and expanding the foundation for related industries.
To prevent animal abuse and conflicts in pet businesses, we will strengthen management standards for breeding operations—including space requirements and staffing—and prepare a standard contract for pet sales businesses.
We will link identification numbers of breeding dogs (parent dogs) and puppies to manage lineage information, and provide detailed information to adopters to prevent illegal distribution and fraudulent sales.
For the growing demands in pet-sitting, pet hotels, and grooming services, we will expand business formats to include home-visit services. For pet funeral services, we will relax location requirements for pet cremation facilities, introduce tree-burial options, and establish support systems for local communities to promote a mature pet memorial culture.
To broaden consumer choice in veterinary care, we will train specialist veterinarians in specific fields, develop an advanced animal hospital system including secondary and tertiary care centers, and release the 1st Comprehensive Plan for Animal Medical Services this June, outlining mid-to-long-term policy direction.
Lastly, to nurture related industries—such as pet food and pet tech—we plan to enact a tentative “Act on Fostering Companion Animal-Related Industries”, creating institutional frameworks for infrastructure development, workforce training, and export/investment support.
We will establish and operate inter-ministerial councils and public-private-academic cooperation systems to effectively implement the tasks in this plan, raising both the level of animal welfare in our society and public awareness of its importance.
We will also continue discussions on issues that require improved social consensus and institutional infrastructure—such as restructuring the animal welfare legal system and securing stable funding for animal welfare policies.
This concludes the explanation of the 3rd Comprehensive Animal Welfare Plan. Thank you.
Click to learn more: 👉 https://koreandogs.org/3rd-comprehensive-animal-welfare-plan/
