While the country was busy smoothly getting back to the new year’s work routine, the Cabinet of Ministers prepared another victory at its meeting on January 10. There was a mini-revolution in laboratory food researches carried out as part of state control.
In the near future, both public and private laboratories will be authorized to carry out them. The state abandoned a hardline monopoly in state control and delegated certain powers to private sector entities. In such a way, it laid the foundations to create competition between private and public laboratories and reduce the cost of relevant researches. As a result, this will allow to optimize the network of public laboratories and save taxpayers’ money spent on the food safety control system.
At the same time, to minimize the risks of research falsification, the Government approved the criteria to be met by authorized laboratories (one of which is to comply with a special procedure for ensuring the objectivity of researches), as well as a procedure for inspecting activities of authorized laboratories by the state. So, another important element of the European model of food safety has been introduced!
The food industry reform is progressing well while being a kind of beta tester of innovative solutions in many aspects of the Ukrainian inspection system. The BRDO Office will continue to closely monitor and support progressive steps towards developing a risk-oriented food control model based on the European model.
In addition, the BRDO Office worked on the analysis of milk market problems (Green Paper “Milk Market Regulation”) last year and is currently working on the analysis of the meat market. In these researches, we identified delegation and empowerment of private laboratories as one of the elements of an effective state control system in accordance with European practices.