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2. INSPECTIONS

2.8 Trade inspection

This area of inspection activities included the following: the inspection of retail network (i.e. big stores of trade chains, smaller shops and stalls) and the inspection of wholesale warehouses (i.e. locations where big volumes of goods were concentrated before their distribution to other businesses, shops, etc.).

Similarly as in the previous years, the plans of individual CAFIA Inspectorates, planned centrally-managed inspections and, to a significant extent, also topical proposals for inspections arising throughout the year, such as consumer complaints or suggestions of other state institutions, served as a basis of the concept of trade inspections in 2003.

In the framework of the trade inspections the CAFIA inspectors primarily focused on checking the adherence to those obligations and requirements the sellers could directly influence: requirements for food safety in relation to the storage conditions; observation of temperature modes in chilled and frozen foodstuffs; adherence to hygienic standards during the sale; information indicated during the sale of unpacked foodstuffs; store equipment according to the assortment of the goods sold; adherence to the ‘expiry’ and ‘best before’ dates. The deficiencies that obviously had not arisen as a result of incorrect performance of the sellers (for example inappropriate labelling of packed products; breach of food safety; and/or cases of adulterated foodstuffs caused by an error in production and/or during the import) mainly served as proposals for dealing with producers or importers responsible for solving such cases.

From the point of view of inspecting individual food commodities the inspections in retail network mainly focused on fresh fruit and vegetables, meat products, dairy products, processed fruit and vegetables, wine, spirits, bakery products, confectionery products and delicatessen.

In terms of the wholesale the inspection, as in the previous years, primarily focused on imported foodstuffs and follow-up investigation of unsatisfactory food samples found during the inspection in retail networks.