Agriculture Ministry prepared draft law
Ministry of Agriculture and Food has prepared a draft law «On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine regarding food safety,» the Ministry’s communication says.
The developed document proposes to amend 13 laws, including the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offences, the Criminal Code, the Commercial Code of Ukraine, the Customs Code, Laws of Ukraine «On the safety and quality of food «, «On Baby Food», «On Protection of Consumers' Rights», «On retirement, recycle, recycling, destruction, or continued use of defective and dangerous products,» «On Veterinary Medicine» and so on.
«Inter alia, such changes involve increased responsibility of food producers for violating the law. For example, in all developed countries, including the EU, foodstuffs are controlled and checked before their entry into the consumer market, the manufacturer is responsible for that», head of Ukraine's State Vetphitoservice Volodymyr Horzheyev notes.
Therefore the adoption of these changes will ensure adequate protection of human health and consumers' rights. Ministry of Health will continue to perform its functions, including the establishment of an adequate level of protection of human health, food safety indicators and other sanitation facilities, hygiene requirements to sanitation facilities etc. Also the central executive body will work that will carry out state control over food catering establishments. In addition, there will be a body responsible for protecting consumer rights.
But the main responsibility will be assigned to the State Veterinary and Phytosanitary Service, which will organize and carry out state control in the sphere of food safety other than public catering.
This work in different parts of the food chain will involve various specialists such as analysts, epidemiologists, food technologists and experts on health, ecologists, microbiologists, toxicologists and others. That is, professionals with medical training (doctors of Nutrition Hygiene) will be taken to office of the competent authority.
