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Kyrgyzstan still has no law on food safety

Kyrgyzstan is the only country in the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), which does not have its own law on food safety. The Ministry of Health reported.

The ministry submitted to the Parliament the relevant draft law. It is designed to fill the existing gap in the legislation — the lack of a single law that establishes the legal basis for creation of a unified system for ensuring the safety of all food products produced and traded in the republic’s market.

Now the legislation has norms regulating certain issues of food safety at different stages of its production. But there are no direct legislative requirements to ensure the safety of the process of manufacture of plant products used for food.

More often, ensuring of the safety of food products is reduced to compliance with technical regulations without regard to primary production.

«Food production includes several large stages: primary production, production / processing, import, storage, processing, transportation, sale of food products to the end user. Regulation of these processes should be based on a unified approach. The existence of such a law is a confirmation for the potential partners and investors of the existence in the republic of an effective system for ensuring food safety,» background statement says.

The Ministry of Health notes that the absence of any of the components of the system to ensure the safety of products in the country significantly complicates the admission of domestic products to the international market both within and outside the EEU.

The bill on food safety provides basic concepts related to the topic, establishes the rights and obligations of participants in the process of production of food products and regulatory authorities.

The draft law determines the requirements for the activities of entrepreneurs engaged in primary production. This part does not fall within the scope of regulation of technical regulations and is absent in national legislation.

The Ministry of Health proposes to introduce the possibility of monitoring and checking the entrepreneurs without their prior notification.

«The draft law is based on the normative base of EEU, but does not duplicate the requirements of technical regulations. It unites disparate requirements for different stages of food production, existing in the national legislation and legislation of EEU, into a single system,» the Ministry of Health said.

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