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 As a result, more than 31 tonnes of products were withdrawn from circulation, including 6 tonnes of milk and dairy products, 4.7 tonnes of fish, 3.3 tonnes of poultry, 2 tonnes of meat and meat products.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.
Milk production in Ukraine decreased by 4.1%, to 8.02 million tonnes in January-October 2020 (excluding the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Joint Forces Operation zone) compared to the same period in 2019.
According to the State Statistics Service, 2.71 million tonnes of meat (live weight) were produced in the ten months, which is 1.2% less than in January-October of the previous year.
Egg production decreased by 1.6%, to 14.09 billion eggs for the reporting period.
According to the State Statistics Service, milk production in Ukraine in 2019 decreased by 3.6%, to 9.7 million tonnes compared to 2018. Egg production increased by 3.4% to 16.68 billion in 2019, and meat (live weight) by 5.3%, to 3.49 million tonnes.
Milk production in Ukraine in January-December 2019 decreased by 3.7% compared to 2018, to 9.69 million tonnes.
According to the State Statistics Service, 3.48 million tonnes of meat (live weight) was produced in 2019, which is 4.8% more than in 2018.
Egg production in January-December increased by 3.4%, to 16.68 billion.
As reported, with reference to statistical data, milk production in Ukraine in 2018 decreased by 1.8% compared to 2017, to 10.1 million tonnes.
Egg production in 2018 increased by 4.1%, to 16.14 billion, meat (in live weight) by 1%, to 3.3 million tonnes.
