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The Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority (CAFIA) participated in the European co-ordinated inspection program aimed at foodstuffs offered on the Internet (CC_eFOOD). The activity was the first one of its kind on the European Commission level in the field of foodstuffs of which goal was to check whether e-shops offered foodstuffs in contradiction with EU legislation. Increasing the activity of the Member States in the area of e-commerce supervision was another aim of this activity.

The inspections were focused on observance of legislation as regards food supplements and so-called novel foods. Inspectors checked in particular whether the offer of food supplements included so-called medical claims (information indicating the ability to prevent or cure diseases which is in contradiction with Article 7 of Regulation (EU) No. 1169/2011) and further on products which maid contain unauthorised novel foods.

Supervisory bodies from 25 EU Member States, Switzerland and Norway participated in the inspection activity and they checked c. 1,100 websites. They revealed offer of 779 non-compliant products which originated mostly from traders based in the country of the relevant supervisory body (65%) but also from traders based in another Member State (20%) or a third country, in particular in the USA or China (15%).

Within the inspection activity, CAFIA selected several dozen websites and inspectors then checked the total of 21 e-shops operated by 19 entities and checked 26 various products. All offered foodstuffs had been identified as non-compliant before the inspection was commenced. In the course of the inspection inspectors found out that several products missed current information on their composition on the labelling, i.e. that in reality, these products failed to contain the unauthorised novel foodstuffs.

In 154 cases, supervisory bodies co-operated on cross-border level to handle the issue, namely by means of the Administrative Assistance Information System (AACS) and in 139 cases, co-operation within the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) was utilised.

Article by: Mgr. Pavel Kopřiva – CAFIA Spokesperson, phone: +420 542 426 633