EUREPGAP

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EUREPGAP

• The European Principles of
• Food Safety

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Increasing awareness of food safety in consumers

• greater variety of foods available for the
  consumer
• the need for more information on food labels
• Consumers increasingly look for greater
  assurances of product safety and quality

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EUROPEAN Requirements -integral part of product
quality.

• EU requirements
• Regulate
• production, processing, distribution, retail,
  packaging and labelling of food stuffs, codes of
  practice.
• Serve
• as preventative approach to reducing food-borne
  illness
• Becoming more frequent, stringent, complex, and
  multi-dimensional

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Escalation of food safety and food
qualityrequirements

• CODEX ALIMENTARIUS
• General Principals and Requirements of Food Law
  (EC R 178/02) introduces mandatory traceability
  requirement
• Revision of Hygiene Regulation EC/93/43 HACCP
  becomes compulsory for agriculture in general
  (for farming ISO 9000 is recommended)
• European Union is moving forward with mandatory
  traceability for all food products

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Improving the safety of the food supply

• Food control strategy
• food safety systems, based on prevention,education
  and verification
• Risk Assessment and Research to Support the Food
  Safety System
• Food can be contaminated by
• chemicals, natural toxins, foreign
  matter,organisms.

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Improving information flow

• Food labels
• Research shows that shoppers regularly read food
  labels for a number of reasons. It may be that
  your child has an allergy or intolerance to a
  food or food additive. A family member may have
  to reduce their fat intake. Others may have a
  special dietary need if they are vegetarian or
  wish to avoid specific foods for religious
  reasons. Some may want to avoid genetically
  modified food for personal reasons.
• Shoppers consistently ask for more information
  about exactly what food contains

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EUREPGAP

• The meaning of EU safety standards for the
  agricultural producers

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Preventive approach to food safety

• Focus of food safety management- identifying and
  minimising food-borne hazards at the points in
  the food chain where those hazards are
  introduced, rather than relying on finding a
  problem at the end of the process
• The principal role of Food Standards is to
  protect the health and safety of people hrough
  the maintenance of a safe food supply
• Lack of international standards and technical
  equivalence multiplicity of standards is a
  major problem

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Making a difference with produce

• Availability of fruit and vegetables out of
  season create anxiety about how are they
  cultivated
• Need for certificated evidence to satisfy
  consumer concerns
• Food companies and retailers seek to maintain
  rigid food safety standards
• International credibility of Certificates

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Food safety from the food chain

• risk analysis
• assessment, management and communication
• Traceability
• primary producer, post-harvest treatment, food
  processing and distribution to the consumer
• Equivalence in food safety systems
• prevention at source

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Farm to Table Food Safety

• Mandatory hygiene requirements to the production
  and manufacturing set by quality standards
• Farmers- beginning of the food chain and dealing
  with food at its purest stage
• Food processors and manufacturers- major impact
  on food quality and on aspects of food safety and
  health
• Supermarkets- large businesses which could not
  afford to make mistakes

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Strategy for Produce

• Encourage Good Agricultural Practices and good
  farming practice to minimize potential hazards on
  raw fresh fruits and vegetables
• Develop training packages to assist countries in
  the implementation of standards
• Agricultural practices and post-harvest water
  uses, manure and biosolids, worker health and
  hygiene, field and facility sanitation,
  transportation, and traceback

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Safety Issues

• Microbiological contamination
• Pesticide residues in agrifood
• Residues in animal feed
• Chemical contamination of water
• Worker exposure to chemicals
• Nutrition

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Produce Processing
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CONSTRAINS of SMEs

• Lack of capacity to meet externally imposed
  standards
• Lack of capacity to correct non-conformances
• Increase knowledge and the uniform application of
  the food safety standards
• Standards as market entry barrier and threat to
  existing suppliers

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Why participate in standardization?

• To be integrated in the international trading
  system
• To propose standards for local products for which
  international standards do not exist
• opportunities for industry to achieve application
  of voluntarily safe and acceptable standards

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THANK YOU