Risk-Based surveillance as a strategic tool to improve food safety in the russian consumer market

Introduction. Protecting consumers’ lives and health in a condition when the number of producers and the variety of food products is continually growing is one of the state’s strategic tasks and the goals of the administrative reform in the Russian Federation.

Material and methods. The work uses methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, and generalization of the existing in international practice methodological approaches and criteria to assess product safety in planning control and supervision activities, assessing the risk of harm to human health, applied the comparative legal method, methods of mathematical modeling and other methods used when searching legal and analytical research.

Results. A risk-oriented model of control and supervisory activities for food safety is proposed and tested. The model is built under the general principles of the risk assessment methodology and is based on the analysis of the results of previous checks, studies and trials, data from epidemiological studies and relevant scientific literature. The model assumes three successively implemented stages: the categorization (classification) of the economic entity’s activities according to the potential risk of harm to health. Target – to select facilities for the most frequent and in-depth inspections by the supervisory authorities. The second stage is the classification of food products according to the potential risk to consumer health to justify the types of food products subject to priority supervision during scheduled inspections of economic entities. The third stage is constructing “risk profiles” of certain products to optimize laboratory control of food safety.

Discussion. The construction of risk-oriented control based on the principle of step-by-step substantiation and clarification of supervision objects was shown to ensure the targeting of authority and an increase in inspection pressure on precisely those objects that are characterized by the most frequent violations of legal requirements with the most severe and large-scale consequences for health. Increasing the control density at the highest risk categories’ facilities does not require additional resources from the regulator. It is still implemented by removing facilities with moderate or low risk from planned supervision and optimizing laboratory support.

Conclusion. Work out and implement a risk-based food safety surveillance model corresponds to the strategic vector of development of state control (supervision) in the Russian Federation. The system assumes that “risky” goods are unsafe for the consumer’s health. Accordingly, their producers, distributors, and sellers should be under robust inspection, including laboratory supervision, and precisely according to those indicators for which these risks are most significant. The system is in a dynamic state and development.