Hyundai Green Food has started offering low-carbon certified pork ham for institutional catering in South Korea, marking the first such move in the industry. The initial volume is 30 tons per year, about 10% of the company's total pork ham used in catering. The pork comes from farms certified by South Korea's Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, which must cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 10% compared to conventional pork production. These farms use reduced-protein feed and turn livestock byproducts into biogas. The company has run a Green Day program since 2021, serving low-carbon meals twice a month at roughly 600 of its 650 institutional catering sites. Starting this month, it will also offer low-carbon pork menu items once a month at those sites. Hyundai Green Food says it plans to gradually increase the volume as low-carbon pork production scales up. The move is a concrete example of how carbon reduction targets are entering the food supply chain, not just energy or transport. It will be interesting to see if other catering companies follow and whether the 10% emissions reduction threshold gets tightened over time.
