Food Safety Component

Implementation and efficient operation of a food safety system which is based on HACCP principles, is a major requirement of the European food legislation that establishes producers' liability for production of safe food products. This is important not only for food industry operators in the European Union but also for other counties' producers who want to obtain free access to EU markets for their goods. That is why the food legislation in such countries must be harmonized with the European food legislation because the process of issuing an approval for a producer to export food products to the EU involves not only the inspection of an enterprise or its suppliers but also an assessment of operation on the methods of national competent authorities and the recognition by the EU of their methods and inspection results.

In Ukraine, food safety is regulated by numerous pieces of legislation (the Laws of Ukraine "On Food Safety and Quality", "On Sanitary-and-Epidemiological Welfare of the Population" etc.) which every so often contradict each other and lead to duplication of supervisory authorities' functions, thus causing inefficiency of the food safety control system.

In view of the above, it is planned to carry out the following activities under the Food Safety Component:

To develop recommendations on harmonization of the Ukrainian food and veterinary legislation with European norms and standards;
To formulate a strategy for enhancing the Ukrainian food safety assurance system;
To carry out analysis of food safety institutional framework;
To improve the Ukrainian food product traceability and animal identification and registration systems;
To provide food safety training;
To coordinate the Project's food safety activities with similar activities of the Twinning and other projects in this area;
To assist in organization of a tender for the procurement of equipment; to provide reference laboratories in pilot regions with modern laboratory equipment for detection of residues of veterinary preparations in products of animal origin; to train laboratory personnel, inspectors and veterinary doctors in using this equipment and familiarize them with best international practices;
To prepare an English-Ukrainian veterinary glossary; to translate (some) EU food and veterinary regulations;
To translate DG SANCO e-newsletters and other relevant information into Ukrainian; to arrange access to EU veterinary databases.

Main partners of the Component are the State Committee for Veterinary Medicine of Ukraine (SCVM) and the state enterprise “Agency for Animal Identification and Registration” (AAIR). Also the Food Safety Component works closely with the sanitary-epidemiological service of the Ministry of Health Protection of Ukraine and pilot enterprises in the Component’s pilot regions.

Pilot regions of the Component: Poltava, Cherkasy, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, since June 2010 (on the request of the State Committee for Veterinary Medicine of Ukraine) – Ivano-Frankivsk, Sumy and Chernihiv.