Quality control crackdown: Ukraine leads in rejected imports
The Agricultural and Food Product Trade Quality Inspection (IJHARS) summarised the first half of the year's inspections. During this period, it issued 167 decisions prohibiting the market entry of products from abroad, most often from Ukraine. Here are the most common irregularities.
Butter from Ukraine, wine from Chile, or corn from Egypt - these are just some examples of products that the services halted this year.
Dr. Tomasz Białsa, Director of the Strategy and Internal Control Office at the Chief Inspectorate of Trade Quality of Agricultural and Food Products, provided us with a summary of the first half of the year regarding inspections in foreign trade.
From 1 January 2024 to 30 June 2024, the Agricultural and Food Product Trade Quality Inspection issued 167 decisions prohibiting market entry - he informs.
A surge of negative decisions concerning Ukraine
The results of these inspections are recorded in a central registry. The data collected in the first half of the year reveal the countries of origin for the halted items.
The undisputed, yet infamous leader is Ukraine, which was subject to 124 negative decisions. Comparatively, according to the bulletin "Knowledge and Quality," authored by IJHARS, the Inspection issued "253 decisions prohibiting the market entry of a total of 272 product batches from Ukraine, failing to meet trade quality requirements" in the entire last year.
The summary of the first half of 2024 shows that the United Kingdom holds second place (14 prohibitions), followed by Serbia (10).
Other countries sporadically appear in the service's registry. Three decisions concerned China, and two each - Turkey, Egypt, Chile, and Moldova. In the first six months of 2024, IJHARS inspectors also halted products from countries such as Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Israel, Pakistan, Myanmar, Peru, New Zealand, and Russia.
The Chief Inspectorate operates 16 regional branches, but the distribution of negative decisions is not uniform.
The most were issued by the Regional Inspectorate of Trade Quality of Agricultural and Food Products in Lublin (52). Inspectors in Rzeszów (46) and Bydgoszcz (22) also detected many irregularities.
Labelling errors and pests. Such errors were detected by the services
- The most frequently identified irregularities by IJHARS inspectors are inconsistencies in labelling, such as the unauthorised use of the "GMO-free" declaration, a complete lack of labelling in Polish, and errors in nutritional value - lists Dr. Białsa.
The second most common reason for prohibitions was the detection of the presence of pests, as well as visible signs of spoilage. For example, at the beginning of May, IJHARS in Lublin detected dead and live pests in a batch of 22,000 kg of flax seeds imported from Ukraine.
Additionally, Dr. Białsa points out that many negative decisions were due to "failure to meet physico-chemical parameters." This pertains to improper laboratory test results mainly concerning "moisture content, sugar content, and fat content."
What does an IJHARS inspection look like?
IJHARS, which is subject to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, oversees the trade quality of agricultural and food products. The act on the trade quality of agricultural and food products indicates that trade quality refers to "the features of an agricultural or food product concerning its organoleptic, physico-chemical, and microbiological properties."
To assess it, IJHARS conducts planned or ad hoc domestic inspections. It also monitors goods in foreign trade. This applies to products from outside the European Union and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) member states.
At the border with Ukraine, inspections are around the clock, enabling, as stated in the bulletin, "real-time monitoring of goods flow and the provision of significant reports on this subject to relevant authorities."
The IJHARS inspection includes actions derived directly from regulations. Through it, inspectors have the right to:
- check documents enabling the identification of the agricultural or food product, quality certificates, laboratory test results, and other documents attesting to its trade quality,
- examine packaging, labelling, presentation of the agricultural or food product, and the conditions of its storage and transport,
- inspect the goods,
- take samples and perform laboratory tests,
- determine the quality class of the product.
IJHARS has eight specialised laboratories at its disposal.
- If the goods fail to meet the trade quality requirements specified in trade quality regulations or declared, the Regional Inspector of Trade Quality of Agricultural and Food Products responsible for the inspection location issues a decision prohibiting the market entry of the particular batch on Polish territory and then submits the related documentation to the competent authority of the National Revenue Administration (KAS), which decides on further action - explains Dr. Białsa.
