Deputy State Secretary for Food Chain Control Supervision and Agricultural Administration Lajos Bognár has reported on the activities and future plans of the food chain supervisory authority before the Subcommittee of the Hungarian Parliament's Consumer Protection Committee.

With regard to the activities of the food chain control authority, the specialist politician told the committee that with a view to the whole food chain – "from the soil to the table" – 350 thousand spot checks had been performed during the course of last year, 150 thousand products were monitored and 1.8 million related tests had been completed. Secondary food tests – performed at the first place of storage in Hungary – involved 15000 lots of food between January 1 and October 30, and included 4725 on-site checks throughout the country.

There is also a great need for innovation and expansion, because new factors that endanger food safety are continuously appearing within the chain. The world's food chain risk chart is changing, new germs and bacteria, new additives and chemicals are appearing, and we must also counter food fraud, bio-terrorism and the black market. The Deputy State Secretary also mentioned the fact that a total of 3358 complaints had reached the European Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), of which only 0.7% were made in connection with Hungarian products. The vast majority of complaints made to the Hungarian RASFF were also made with regard to foreign products and not local ones.

Food safety was not the only subject of the official hearing; Head of Department of the Ministry of Rural Development Zoltán Gyaraky presented a report on his experiences with regard to dishonest behaviour on the part of distributors. He stated: the authority completed a total of six comprehensive checks during the course of last year, of which five resulted in proceedings and fines totalling 780 million Ft. The largest fine was 198 Ft. So far this year, 9 investigations have been completed, of which four resulted in proceedings. Fines totalling 381 million Ft were imposed, the largest "item" was 136 million Ft.

Speaking before the Committee, Lajos Bognár stressed that responsibility for food safety is split between business, state and consumer. The state's responsibility is the monitored food chain programme, which should result in modern, firm and transparent measures on the part of the authorities.
The Deputy State Secretary closed the Ministry's report by stating that the maintaining of food safety requires the monitoring of the whole food chain. Only a complex system provides the opportunity for the authorities to immediately step in and react in the case of an emergency.

(Press Office of the Ministry of Rural Development)