INFAGRO: The State Food Safety and Consumer Protection Service has been authorised to provide the supervision of the relevant enterprises, in particular, dairy plants. The moratorium on the verifications has been lifted. How the verification and surveillance will be performed? Is there any schedule?  What may cause the inspector’s visit to a dairy?

The routine verifications of the enterprises are performed by the territorial offices of The State Food Safety and Consumer Protection Service of Ukraine. The guidance document for this activity is the Order of Ministry of Economic Development #1553 of November 30, 2015 which contains the action plan for the state verifications to be fulfilled in 2016.

The plans for the state surveillance and verification of enterprises’ economic activity are worked out in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On basic principles of the state supervision in the sphere of economic activity”. These plans are to be approved in advance, that is before the 25th of the last month preceding the planned period. This means that the verification plans for the third and fourth quarters of 2016 are to be approved by 25 June.

As for the reasons our inspector can make an unscheduled visit to the enterprise, there is an exhaustive list of reasons for this. The inspector is authorised to come for verification or surveillance in the following cases:

• On the company’s request.

“The entity provides a written application to the relevant authority of state supervision (control) on the implementation of measures of the state supervision (control) on the company’s request.”

• To identify or verify the questionable data in the company’s documentation.

“Identifying and confirming the unreliability of the data declared in the mandatory reporting documents filed by the entity.”

• To check compliance with regulations relating to previously identified violations.

“Surveillance of the entity’s compliance with regulations, orders or other administrative documents on eliminating violations of legislation issued on the results of the preceding verifications made by the state supervision authority.”

• If the The State Food Safety and Consumer Protection Service receives a consumer’s complaint on violation of his rights.

“Justified request of an individual entity on the case of abuse of legal rights. Unscheduled event in this case is made only with the consent of the central executive authorities.”

• If the company delays submission of the required documents and does not explain the reasons.

“Entity’s failure to submit the required account documents by the due date without good reason and written explanations of the reasons that prevented the submission of such documents.”

• If activities of the company caused serious consequences (industrial accidents or damage to health).

“Because of the occurrence of the accident that caused victim’s death due to an accident or illness that was associated with the activities of the entity”