Specialists of the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection of the Department of State Policy in the Field of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and food of Ukraine joined the practical workshop "Training inspection of the certification body for compliance with the requirements of the legislation in the field of organic production, circulation and labelling of organic products".

The experts of the training were Sergiy Galashevskyy (General Manager) and Vasyl Shukalovych (leading certification specialist) of the Organic Standard certification body and Yuriy Ohlashennyy, Senior National Long-term Advisor of the organic component of QFTP.

During the event, the participants had the opportunity to get acquainted with the peculiarities of conducting the state supervision of the certification body, its components and with the check-list of the unified form of the act drawn up as a result of a planned (unscheduled) state supervision (control) of compliance by the certification body with the requirements of the legislation in the field of organic production, circulation and labelling of organic products.

Thanks to this practice, the participants of the training will be able to conduct high-quality state supervision of certification bodies in accordance with the legislation in the field of organic production, circulation and labelling of organic products in the future. Additionally, the training participants were familiarised with the documentation related to the certification of operators.

This training was organised upon the request of the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection and the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine in partnership with Organic Standard certification body with support of Switzerland within the framework of the Swiss-Ukrainian Program “Higher Value Added Trade from the Organic and Dairy Sector in Ukraine” (QFTP) implemented by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL, Switzerland) in partnership with SAFOSO AG (Switzerland).

As a reminder, in accordance with the current legislation, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine ensures the maintenance of the State Register of Certification Bodies in the field of organic production and circulation of organic products.