Milk and dairy products (especially butter) were most often falsified among food products in the first quarter of 2021, and the most common violation in the production of butter is the presence of non-dairy fats, the State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection said.
According to the agency, the second common type of violation this year is the inconsistency of food labeling.
The service clarified that since the beginning of the year, it has carried out 85 scheduled and 2,900 unscheduled inspections. As a result, more than 31 tonnes of products were withdrawn from circulation, including 6 tonnes of milk and dairy products, 4.7 tonnes of fish, 3.3 tonnes of poultry, 2 tonnes of meat and meat products. The department made 49 decisions to suspend the circulation of food products, transferred 11 cases to law enforcement agencies and issued fines to violators in the amount of over UAH 1.6 million.
“The food products that Ukrainian consumers buy must be safe and meet all legislative norms and requirements. We must protect consumers. Work in this direction will only intensify,” head of the department Vladyslava Mahaletska said.
As reported, the State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection in March introduced a unified quality standard for raw milk, within the framework of which the Milk Module was launched – software for the automatic collection of research results for dairy raw materials.
According to Mahaletska, the Milk Module calculates the level of total bacterial contamination and the number of somatic cells in milk raw materials. Milk producing farms and milk preparation points in nine regions of Ukraine are involved in the raw milk control program. The project is already being implemented in Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, Mykolaiv and Poltava regions, while Khmelnytsky, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Volyn and Sumy regions are ready for its launch.
Ukraine has been included in the list of countries from which exports of milk and dairy products (including butter and cheese) to Japan are allowed.
The relevant information is posted on the website of the State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumers’ Rights Protection.
In addition, requirements for exports of milk and/or dairy products to Japan are available on the website of the agency.
As reported, at the end of June 2019, the State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumers’ Rights Protection and the competent authority of Saudi Arabia agreed on the form of an international veterinary certificate for exports of milk and dairy products to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The Milk Alliance Group in January-June 2019 increased sales of dairy products by 8% year-over-year, to UAH 2.92 billion.
“In the first half of this year, the situation was worse than planned. In particular, we processed only about 180,000 tonnes of milk against 207,000 tonnes in the same period last year,” Chairman of Milk Alliance’s Supervisory Board Serhiy Vovchenko told Interfax -Ukraine in an interview.
In the first half of 2019, the Milk Alliance increased the production of processed cheese by 19%, to 1,300 tonnes; that of ultra-pasteurized cream by 28%, to 1,300 tonnes; fermented cheese by 11%, to 2,000 tonnes; sour cream by 5%, to 5,300 tonnes; baby food products by 4%, to 5,500 tonnes. The output of milk in different types of packaging remained at last year’s level 27,000 tonnes.
“The output of fermented milk products fell slightly (by 2% to 14,700 tonnes). The production of butter and dry cheese whey fell by 30%, because, firstly, international prices of these products became unprofitable for us, and secondly, we did not make cheese products for export in the same volumes as in previous periods,” Vovchenko said.
In total, the group increased sales of dairy products for the six months of 2019 by 8%, to UAH 2.923 billion.
“We plan to slightly change the structure of capacity utilization in the second half of the year in order to make up the lost income in the first six months of the year. Thus, we should receive revenue at the level of UAH 6.2 billion,” he said.
He pointed out that the share of export earnings in Milk Alliance’s total sales now stands at 25%, the domestic market accounts for 75%.
Ukraine in 2018 would enter the top ten world’s largest exporters of dairy products, First Deputy Agricultural Policy and Food Minister of Ukraine Maksym Martyniuk has said.
“Livestock breeding has begun to develop in our country. According to preliminary statistics, this year we will enter the world’s top ten exporters of dairy products. Our milking rates are growing. Animal productivity is growing, which is a good trend that needs to be supported next year,” he said at a solemn meeting devoted to the Day of Agricultural Workers in Kyiv on Thursday.
According to him, the ministry in 2019 will keep the system of state support for the agro-industrial complex and take into account the “mistakes made this year.”
“We will change the money delivery mechanisms so that as many entities working in the agrarian business as possible get these funds,” Martyniuk said.
“We are not satisfied with the way how the state support programs for the agro-industrial complex are being implemented today. We need to target this support better. I urge the associations, so that next year we can make better targeted support mechanisms to have more opportunities in the agro-industrial complex, since our the task is to do deep processing [of agricultural products] in Ukraine,” Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman said at the event.
He recalled that Ukrainian agricultural products are exported to 190 countries, and the government intends to “open new markets.”
