Food Safety

Training of Staff performing Official Controls

Published: 13 June 2017

The necessity of unified training was set in Regulation (EC) No. 882/2004 of the EP & C for the purpose of verifying the observance of legal rules related to food and feed law and regulations on animal health and welfare. Legal basis of the training introduces Article 6 which stipulates for appropriate authorities in member states the obligation to ensure that every worker carrying out official controls would be properly trained; and Article 51 provides legal tool for organising this training at the Community level as a complement of training organised at the national level.

Mandatory training topics according to Chapter I, Annex II, of Regulation (EC) No. 882/2004 of the EP & C are related to the following areas:

  • Various methods of control, e.g. audits, sampling and inspection
  • Control procedures
  • Food and feed law
  • Various stages of manufacture, processing and distribution, and potential risks to human health and possibly animal health, plant health and the environment
  • Assessment of non-compliance with the requirements of the feed and food law
  • Risks in the animal production and the feed and food production
  • Evaluation of the application of procedures based on HACCP principles
  • Managing systems, such as quality assurance programs that feed and food businesses put in place, and their assessment if they are relevant to compliance with the requirements of the feed and food law
  • Official systems for issuing certificates
  • Contingency plans in case of emergencies, including communication between Member States and the Commission
  • Legal actions and legal aspects of official controls
  • Examination of protocols and other records, including records of proficiency testing, accreditation and risk assessment, which may be important for assessing compliance with the feed and food law; financial a
    nd commercial aspects may be part of it
  • All other areas, including animal health and animal welfare, necessary to ensure that official controls are carried out in accordance with this regulation

The Food Safety Department of the MoA is responsible for training issues.