Official controls of food: bylaws harmonised with EU legislation drafted

Policy and Legal Advice Centre (PLAC III) project  has provided support to the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Agriculture, Water Management and Forestry in harmonisation if legislation related to official controls of food, authorisation of laboratories for performing official control of food and their coordination.

According to the European Commission Country Report, Serbia is moderately prepared in the area of Negotiation Chapter 12 (Food Safety, Veterinary and Phytosanitary policy) and should, as a priority, ensure the institutional sustainability of the National Reference Laboratories Directorate and its adequate staffing, as well as provide a system of official controls based on risk assessment.

Draft bylaws regulating the field of official food controls, authorisation of laboratories and their coordination were prepared through the PLAC III project and presented at a workshop for representatives of the two beneficiary institutions held on December 8, 2020. The documents were drafted in line with Official Controls Regulation (EU) 2017/625 that prescribe rules for performing controls to verify compliance with the rules for the prevention, elimination and minimisation of risks to humans and animals.

The Official Controls Regulation has been applied in the European Union as of December 2019. It has replaced several EU legal acts regulating controls and extended the scope to plant health and plant protection products, thus covering the entire agri-food chain. The regulation strengthens the risk-based approach, as well as the trend of strengthening controls carried out by production entities, and introduces new terms such as food fraud and e-commerce. The Regulation also imposes obligations on Member States to exchange information between competent authorities and judicial authorities on cases of non-compliance and establishes an Integrated Management System for Official Controls (IMSOC).

Project experts Ksenija Longo and Jelena Vračar presented the Official Controls Regulaton, as well as the draft Rulebook on official controls of food and the Rulebook for authorisation and designation of laboratories (official and national reference laboratories for food, feed and animal health), which clearly separate the competencies and powers of the two ministries. Experts also presented the draft procedure for authorisation of laboratories (official, national referent and laboratories performing Trihinela tests) and draft procedure for official controls – audit (tools for performing inspection, verification, screening, targeted screening, sampling, and laboratory analyses, testing and diagnosis based on the draft rulebook on official controls).

The workshop was attended by some 20 representatives of the Veterinary Directorate and the Sector for Agricultural Inspections of the Ministry of Agriculture, as well as the Directorate for Sanitary Inspection and the Directorate for Sanitary Border Inspection of the Ministry of Health. The debate with the participants referred to the way of reporting and keeping records in an integrated information system.

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