The total of 1.317 unsafe, adulterated and poor-quality foodstuffs have been published by the Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority (CAFIA) on its website Food Pillory (www.potravinynapranyri.cz) so far. The website, where CAFIA regularly publishes serious detections found within official inspections, has been visited by almost 2.400.000 consumers since its launching in July 2012. In the first year of its existence, the project won the category Service Beneficial for the Public of the inquiry of the Czech Internet – Magnifying Glass. The votes of consumers decided that this victory was successfully defended this year. The results of the voting were released by the organiser within the gala ceremony on 20^th November 2013 in Prague theatre Archa.

The Food Pillory is constantly developing, applications for mobile phones with operating system Android and Windows Phone were launched recently and enable consumers e.g. taking a picture of a misconduct detected in the retail and sending it as a suggestion for inspection to CAFIA together with a brief description so that CAFIA could deal with it without undue delay. Also an application for mobile phones with operating system iOS – iPhone will be available in the near future. At the present time, the Inspection Authority publishes not only information on non-complying lots of foodstuffs but also on foodstuffs that complied with all parameters checked during thematically focused inspections. Consumers may thus get acquainted with complete overview of inspection results, e.g. inspections focused on honey, presence of noroviruses and hepatitis A in frozen fruit, inspection of meat content in Vienesse sausages, etc.

“The interest of the public in the Food Pillory as well as the amount of voters who supported the project in the inquiry Magnifying Glass shows that our work is meaningful. The purpose of the website is to help consumers as well as honest producers or sellers of foodstuffs, and contribute thus to the cultivation of the situation on the market. The success of the Food Pillory is a good advert for the whole CAFIA made by the consumers themselves. We are happy for this award but we are also aware that this is a commitment for us“, Jindřich Pokora, Director of the Control, Laboratories and Certification of CAFIA said.