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Today in Brno, representatives of the European Commission assessed their observations from a  several-day visit of selected Czech authorities during which they acquainted themselves with the functioning of the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed – RASFF in the Czech Republic.

Mr. Adrianus Ten Velden and Ms. Lea Arbeiter representing the Commission and Mr. David Yard working for the Commission as a national expert visited the National Contact Point (NCP) for the RASFF, which is the Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority. At selected CAFIA workplaces, they were minutely concerned about forwarding information within CAFIA  as well as among single Czech authorities connected with the NCP, how supervisory bodies react on notifications regarding dangerous foodstuffs  or feedingstuffs directly in the fieldwork and how they proceed during inspections and during laboratory analyses of samples regarding foodstuffs coming from third countries.

The EC delegates obtained other details from representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of  Health, the National Institute for Public Health, the State Veterinary Administration, the Central Institute for Supervising and Testing in Agriculture and the General Directorate of Customs. All these authorities comprise a part of the Czech Rapid Alert System and they are connected with the NCP.

During today‘s closing assessment, Mr. Ten Velden expressed a great praise to the Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority as well as to other authorites in connection how effectively and promptly the system in the Czech Republic works. „In the Czech Republic, you have established a system which is very close to the utter excellence“, he said today in Brno. At the same time, he appraised the level of technical equipment and background of CAFIA inspectors who perform controls in the fieldwork. „Your colleagues from the most of the EU Member States would envy how up-to-dated and high-quality equipment you have“, said Mr. Velden in conclusion of the visit.

In the form of a network, RASFF connects  supervisory bodies responsible for supervision over food and feed safety in single Member States of the European Union. The centre of the system is the European Commission – All notifications regarding incidence of dangerous foodstuffs or feedingstuffs in any Member State are sent to DG SANCO (Health and Consumer Protection Directorate-General). Notifications are also sent to the European Food Safety Authority.

A trial run of the RASFF was started in the Czech Republic as early as in August 2003 and the Czech Republic became a full-fledged member of the system after the accession to the EU. Via the Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority, 93 notifications have been sent to the system and on the contrary, 82 notificatons have been received since April 2004. The absolute majority of them were handled by the Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority. None of the existing notifications  was too serious to be a real threat to health of Czech consumers.