Food Hygiene and Food Safety in the Baltic Region

Closed

The idea with the project is to harmonize the way in which we interpret our common food legislation. We also want to raise competence among controlstaff and increase interest in foodhygiene and food related issues among foodbusinesses and consumers. Since a couple of years there has been a cooperation between Swedish and German foodinspectors which has resulted in joint projects. When the idea about the project grew we decided to invite our Polish colleauges to join the project.The project has been developed through a number of joint meetings in Sweden and Germany during 2010. The project consists of 8 activities: We want to create similar checklists wich contains similar controlpoints for auditing foodproducers in general, we want to harmonize the way in wich we audit small-scale fishsmokeries wich are common in the region, we want to create a questionbank which could be used to carry out an inventory of fields in which there is a need for raise of competence among controlstaff, we will carry out a work exchange between inspectors in participating countries in order to raise competence and experience. In order to raise interest and knowledge about food legislation and food hygiene, we want to plot different awardsystems within the BSR which aims to make knowledge about hygiene at producer level avaliable to consumers, we want to create an information leaflet for crossborder traders with information regarding legislation and finally we want to create an joint webpage with information essential to both businesses and consumers. Theese activities will take place mainly during four conferences which also will include external lecturers in order to raise compence among controlstaff. Our target groups are food businesses and consumers in the partnership area and also controlstaff colleauges and food business organizations. The expected results are a better understanding and interpretation of our common food legislation both by using similar checklists and controlpoints. We will have a higher degree of competence and experience among controlstaff when it comes to interpretation of the food legislation. We will have raised the interest in questions related to food safety and food hygiene both among food businesses and consumers. Since there is a free movement of goods and services within the EU this project will contribute to the decrease of obstacles for foodbusinesses when they want to establish them in different parts of the BSR. A higher degree of mutual understanding of the food legislation, a raise of competence among controlstaff and a higher degree of information to foodbusinesses and consumers will lead to a more equal competition between companies and a increase in food safety in the partnership area.

Medium