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The Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority have already processed results of an extensive pilot inspections carried out in compliance with a new Decree No. 451/2002, Coll. of L., issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, on conditions and requirements for the operational and personal hygiene of foodstuffs, with the exception of foods of animal origin.   The inspections focused on companies ensuring decisive part of production of foodstuffs of non-animal origin, in other words – this stage of controls applied to the largest and most important manufacturers of this type of foodstuffs. 

The new Decree takes fully into account requirements of the European Union for hygienic and sanitary conditions in food manufacturing companies, as it includes standards of the Directive 93/43/EEC. Full compliance with the Decree will be essential for the Czech producers of foodstuffs, since it will become one of the basic conditions for their future position in the common market. The compliance with the prescribed conditions will apply to audits and certification of the food producers as the suppliers of foodstuffs for the trade network.

The inspections, carried out by the CAFIA inspectors, have so far included a total of 752 food production premises. Each of them was assessed for the effect of individual requirements set in the decree (a total of 74 parameters) for a respective production premise and classified into a specific category based on the amount of risk.

The results came out extremely positive: apart from 4 exceptions, the inspected production premises showed no serious problems regarding the compliance with criteria set in the respective decree. More than 68 % of premises complied with the requirements of the respective decree with only minimum non-conformances, the remaining 30 % of premises complied despite minor non-conformances identified.   

The biggest difficulties for the production companies will probably be the compliance with requirements for appropriate equipment of buildings (e.g. the layout of washbasins, toilets, windows, ceilings and suspended ceilings, etalons and measuring instruments, etc.). But also these problems occur, in general, only in the category “complied despite minor non-conformances identified”.

In particular the large and important food production companies have so far been selected for the passportization, representing approx. 11% of the total number of all manufacturers of foodstuffs of the non-animal origin. It can be assumed that middle and small sized companies will show different results. It is, though, necessary to point out that our producers have been informed about the passportization for the whole ten years. The CAFIA inspections, which have so far been carried out as pilot inspections, can be a kind of feedback for the producers because this is the cheapest and easiest way for them to find out the weak points in their productions. The CAFIA inspections focusing on the compliance with the respective decree still continue – it is the middle sized and smaller sized producers to go next.

Similar information on the results of CAFIA inspections are published at the CAFIA official web sites www.szpi.gov.cz  under the reference Approaches to Inspections.  

The Decree No. 451/2002, Coll. of L., will become effective in two stages:  for the existing producers it’ll be the date of accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union, for the new producers who start up their businesses after 1 July 2003, it will be immediately. The unabbreviated and up-to-date text of the Decree is also published at the official CAFIA web sites.