On 08 November 2023, 12 state inspectors of the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection (SSUFSCP) had a practical workshop “Training inspection of the certification body for compliance with the requirements of the legislation in the field of organic production, circulation and labelling of organic products” on the basis of the first certification body in Ukraine, Organic Standard. Representatives of the Division for Organic Production of the Food Safety and Excise Products Directorate of the Department of State Policy in the Field of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine and Headquarter of the State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection also took part at this training.
The experts of the training were Sergiy Galashevskyy (director-General Manager) and Vasyl Shukalovych (leading certification specialist) of the Organic Standard certification body and Yuriy Ohlashennyy, Senior National Long-term Advisor of the organic component of QFTP. They described and practically demonstrated the peculiarities of the state supervision of the certification bodies’ activities, its components and familiarised the participants with the check-list of the unified form of the act drawn up as a result of a planned (unscheduled) state supervision (control) of compliance by the certification body with the requirements of the legislation in the field of organic production, circulation and labelling of organic products.
“Today’s training is the first experience for the SSUFSCP specialists to implement the knowledge from a series of previous trainings on Ukrainian legislation in the field of organic production, circulation and labelling of organic products, and to practice the methodology of state supervision of certification bodies. Due to the previous significant experience of inspections of Organic Standard, a training inspection on the basis of this certification body is especially valuable, and the SSUFSCP specialists were able to gain practical knowledge on how to organise the processes properly. Such cooperation in the organic sector only improves and strengthens it, and we are grateful to our partners for this” said Yuriy Ohlashennyy, Senior National Long-term Advisor of the organic component of QFTP.
Thanks to this practice, the participants of the training will be able to conduct high-quality state supervision of certification bodies in accordance with the legislation in the field of organic production, circulation and labelling of organic products in the future. Additionally, the training participants were familiarised with the documentation related to the certification of operators.
This training was organised at the request of the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection and the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine in partnership with Organic Standard certification body with support of Switzerland within the framework of the Swiss-Ukrainian Program “Higher Value Added Trade from the Organic and Dairy Sector in Ukraine” (QFTP) implemented by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL, Switzerland) in partnership with SAFOSO AG (Switzerland).
