Residue Inspections not Equivalent in Russia
RUSSIA - An initial assessment by the Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) of the Directorate-General for Health and Consumer Protection (European Commission) experts has found that the state system used to control residues of banned and harmful substances in animals, animal products and feeds in the Russian Federation is not equivalent to its EU counterpart.
29 September 2011
3 minute read
The validation procedure applied to laboratory tests and the fact that some laboratories are not internationally accredited, because the GOST R system is not accepted, is an issue of concern.
The FVO mission was to evaluate the state system used to control residues of banned and harmful substances in animals, animal products and feeds.
The FVO experts visited Moscow and the Moscow, Belgorod and Orenburg Oblasts and to gather information on meat and milk processing plants, a feed mill, pig farms, rabbit farms, aquaculture farms, a beeyard with a honey-packing unit, one wholesale and one retail enterprise selling veterinary preparations and four federal governmental institutions part of Rosselkhoznadzor (the FGBI "Central Scientific and Methodological Veterinary Laboratory", the FGBI "National Centre for Safety of Aquatic Products and Aquaculture", the FGI "Orenburg Reference Centre of the Rosselkhoznadzor", the FGBI “Belgorodskaya Interoblast Veterinary Laboratory").
The FVO experts said that the Federal Law of 26 December 2008 No. 294- FZ “On protection of the rights of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs in the implementation of state control (supervision), and municipal control" restricted access of the Rosselkhoznadzor inspectors to plants.
Because of this implementation of the state system used to control residue in animals, animal products and feeds in the Russian Federation was more complicated.
The inspectors said the Law makes it impossible to develop an effective federal programme for food safety monitoring and implement it using the EU approaches, a report from Rosselkhoznador says.
Alongside with that the FVO experts noted that the Rosselkhoznadzor laboratories were well-equipped, samples used for research work are registered and stored in a proper manner and laboratories took part in international inter-laboratory comparison tests (FAPAS and etc).
The FVO will send a draft report on the mission to the Rosselkhoznadzor within the following 20 days. Final report will be provided after it is discussed by the FVO spokesmen and competent authorities of Russia, then it will be published on the FVO website.
