Support to Quality Infrastructure

Within the context of the overall support programme for the development of a Quality Infrastructure environment in Belarus, food safety was selected as a first priority within the areas of mutual interest given the wide spectrum of issues that need to be dealt with. The overall objective of the programme is improve Belarusian food safety and quality through a gradual alignment of the country's Quality Infrastructure system with the relevant EU and international regulatory and administrative practices, with the active involvement of private sector and civil society stakeholders at all stages of the process. The specific objectives of the programme are fourfold: (1) Support the reform of the Belarusian Accreditation system to enable the demonstration of competence by national, private or public, conformity assessment operators in accordance with internationally recognised procedures (2) Support to the establishment of the Belarusian Market Surveillance system in line with those of the EU member states and the established capacity to become a part of existing rapid information exchange systems on potentially dangerous products (RAPEX, RASFF) (3) Improvement of the Belarusian Reference Laboratory network in charge of ensuring the safety of bottled water, fish, meat and milk products for public health reasons; (4) Capacity building of bottled water/fish/meat/milk processing organisations, for enabling a broad-spectrum industry dissemination of information concerning the adoption of harmonised standards, GHP, GMP and HACCP.