During the Government session, the Minister of Healthcare Akmaral Alnazarova made a report on sanitary and epidemiological control of products.

As noted by the Minister, the implementation of state control over the safety of products is a strategic task of the department and is aimed at protecting the life and health of the population. Since 2015, the state control of products is carried out in the form of preventive control with visits and sanitary and epidemiological examination. Products are also controlled for compliance with the Unified Sanitary Requirements and the requirements of 22 technical regulations of the Eurasian Economic Union. Among them, 13 are food products and 9 are non-food products. From 2015 to 2022, there was a consistent decrease in the number of non-compliant products from 30% to 11%, due to effective work and interdepartmental cooperation. In 2023 and the first half of 2024, due to the transitional provisions of the implementation of the regulation "from scratch", no control was carried out. Since August 2024, control purchase with subsequent examination is carried out.

"To date, control of more than 5 thousand samples of products has been carried out, of which 35% of non-compliant products have been identified. According to the results of the control, 439 operational response measures were taken. More than 2 tonnes of products were withdrawn from sale," Akmaral Alnazarova reported.

According to her, within the framework of cooperation the Ministry of Agriculture introduced enhanced laboratory control in respect of 34 producers of imported products. Also, 200 declarations of conformity of dairy products, poultry meat and perfumes and cosmetics were suspended and cancelled in 2023. As for the sanitary and epidemiological expertise, according to the minister, it is carried out in 84 accredited laboratories of the National Centre of Expertise at regional and district levels. The fulfilment of the regulated indicators is 87 per cent. Every year new methods of research are learnt.

In order to prevent the importation of potentially dangerous to human health products (goods) at checkpoints across the State border of the Eurasian Economic Union sanitary-quarantine control of products subject to state registration is carried out.

‘This year the documentary control of about 2 thousand batches of controlled goods was carried out, the results of which prohibited the import of 177 batches of cargo in excess of 3.5 thousand tonnes," the Minister reported.

As a result of desk control this year, together with the State Revenue Committee of the Ministry of Finance, a decision was made to include 118 high-risk participants of foreign economic activity in the risk management system (red corridor), who illegally used 174 documents on conformity assessment for imported products.

In addition, today there are still questions on the circulation of products with improperly issued certificates, which are accepted without appropriate tests. According to the Minister, in order to address all these issues, the agency together with the authorised body for technical regulation is working to improve the regulations of the Eurasian Economic Union to prevent the circulation of products with illegally issued documents on conformity assessment, the so-called "grey" certificates.

#Government session #Ministry of Healthcare