It’s World Food Safety Day. It aims to point out the advantages of consuming safe and healthy foods, but also to support safe food supply, people’s health, and sustainable development. We checked the quality of food in Bosnia and Herzegovina and whether we comply with the standards and rules of the European Union.
It often happens that the Food Safety Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina withdraws certain batches of products from the market due to the presence of pesticides found after inspections. In order to protect consumers, it is important that all institutions in the chain do everything to ensure that it is safe and of high quality, says the Director of the Food Safety Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Džemil Hajrić.
“Everything that is on the shelves in BiH is subject to the same method of evaluation and the same method of preparation, as it is in the countries of the European Union, and this is the part by which Bosnia and Herzegovina makes efforts to protect its consumers. Incident situations, or some crisis situations with food, they can always happen, but it is important to point out the necessity of the existence of competent authorities and a system that is functional”, says Hajrić.
Food safety is the responsibility of all of us, emphasizes professor from the Faculty of Agriculture in Sarajevo, Enver Karahmet. He says that controls are carried out daily, and it is good that small producers of domestic products who are registered are also subject to them.
“It means that someone is monitoring that household or that producer. They are obliged to periodically do analyses, whether they were by inspection bodies or independent analyzes where you send your products. We don’t have to worry so much about what kind of food we eat, it what is most important is that she is healthy,” stressed Karahmet.
Healthy food is a prerequisite for good health. Food safety plays a key role in protecting consumers from illness – food poisoning and other health problems associated with the consumption of defective food. Consumers say they mostly buy food they are used to.
– The food is contaminated with all pesticides, it’s not good, and I don’t think there is any control at all.
– I don’t think it’s healthy, but it has to be eaten.
– Everything is poison, what they bring in, it’s all dust and dirt.
– I don’t eat any, I live only on water.
On the one hand, those who exercise control, and on the other, consumers who do not trust the quality, but still, as they say, prefer to resort to the products of domestic producers rather than imported ones, which they suspect are genetically modified.
