Lanka's chances of entering EU food market high - Expert
BY RAMANI Kangaraarachchi
THE Sri Lankan food industry has a high potential to enter the EU
market and foods in hotels are of high standard and "I recommend Sri
Lanka as a very good tourist destination," said an EU Food Hygiene
expert from Germany, Dr. Uwe-Jens Saizer.
Dr. Uwe-Jens Saizer |
Dr. Saizer said that he has visited several tourist hotels in the
country and was impressed about food and hygiene in those hotels and it
is important to make the industrialists aware about the potential
legislation requirements and SCPT certification.
Only 10 countries so far have been qualified to export food items to
the EU market, he said.
Saizer was invited by the European Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka
to conduct a workshop on EU legislation requirements for hygiene of
foodstuffs in order to provide expert advice on how to be compliant with
the above regulations and how to obtain HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical
Control Point) certification.
He said that food safety is the key issue in EU food legislation as
food crises in the nineties put safety on the top of the agenda in EU
food policies, which has led to a restructuring of EU food legislation.
The General Food Law, Regulation (EC)178/2002, constitutes the
framework of European Food Law. The General Food Law establishes that
all food marketed in the EU must be safe and lays down requirements on
transparency in the food chain.
Regulation (EC)852/2004 on the hygienic of foodstuffs defines certain
specific hygienic requirements for food imported into the EU. The
applications of the regulation entered into force on January 1, 2006.
The most important aspect of this regulation is that hygienic
requirements based on a HACCP system will also be legally binding for
food produced outside the EU.
General Manager ECCSL, Sujeevan Perera said that the new mandatory
traceability requirement applies to all food including tea, animal feed,
food producing animals and all types of food chain operators from the
farming sector to processing, transport, storage, distribution and
retail to the consumer.
To make the industrialists aware on these points, a half day
programme will be conducted on January 26 at the Ceylon Continental
Hotel, Colombo. |