Design and assessment of food import inspections

Abstract

Import Food control system development and operation are to protect consumers and facilitate fair practices in food trade while ensuring that unjustified technical barriers to trade are not introduced. The Codex Alimentarius Commission had issued guidelines and a code of ethics for food import control systems. The guidelines are intended to assist countries in the requirements and the determination of equivalency, thereby protecting consumers and facilitating trade in foodstuffs. The European Union is the world's biggest importer and exporter of foodstuffs, and works closely with international organisations, World Trade Organisation and Codex Alimentarius Commission. The European Commission, the executive organisation of European Union, works to ensure that Europe's food supply is the safest in the world and that the same standards of food safety apply to all products regardless of origin. Legislation is a key issue to effective food control however legislation is not effective if there is no system of enforcement. For an enforcement officer legislation is the standard used to measure conformity on the basis of his professional judgement. However the problem with legislation is its interpretation and its modus operandi. Transposing legislation into understandable standard operating procedures assists the executive officer in his enforcement and also the operator of the establishment involved is made aware of his responsibilities. Accreditation is the recognition of the competence, impartiality, integrity and performance capability of inspection bodies to carry out specific conformity assessment activities according to internationally agreed criteria. The recognition of a quality system through accreditation is one way of ensuring that observations of products or services are against objective criteria. The choice of the standard is the ISO 17020, General Criteria for the Operation of Various Types of Bodies Performing Inspection. One of the requirements of the standard is the compilation of the quality manual which describes the quality system of the inspection body. The areas of inspections chosen for the scope of accreditation were inspection and sampling of nuts and dried foods for aflatoxin, inspection and sampling for patulin in fruit juices in particular apple juice and inspection of labelling of prepackaged foods. Information gathered for the standard operating procedures was based on the principle to maintain quality standards throughout the inspection regime.