Producers of fruit from B&H, especially apples, who do not meet the standards of the EU, will not be able to export their products from 1 January 2014, announced BHT and reported by Indikator.ba.
The EU strict standards that are based on the level of pesticides and nitrates for them, as they say, are not a problem. The obstacle is the lack of quality certificates, especially the so-called Global Gap.
Due to this, among other things, the RS Law on food will be amended.
While waiting for the adoption of regulations on marketing standards for food, fruit producers are marking losses.
‘’The current state is the harmonization of what will be the legal framework, whether this will be a law on food at the level of B&H or whether every entity will adopt the same rules. We will go with a new law on food’’, said Zoran Kovačević, Assistant Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management of the RS.
The level of pesticides in our country is possible to determine in a few laboratories. In Banja Luka, this job is being done at the Agricultural Institute.
‘’Regarding the pesticide residues, all fruit growers have to do an analysis and to show that there are no pesticides in their products, otherwise they cannot receive a Global Gap. All certified producers have the proper analysis of fruits’’, said Mile Gluvačević from the certification company Intertek Certification GmBH.
But the problem is that in B&H there is no local certification company that would provide farmers with all the necessary documentation for export, and export is conditional on Global Gap certificates for EU consumers.
In B&H there are currently 300 farmers who are certified, of which 50 are in the RS, and around 30 producers of apples are certified.
(Source: ekapija.com)
