The government is going to reduce the staff of the sanitary and epidemiological service

The Cabinet of Ministers decided to halve the number of sanitary epidemiological services. The government plans to deprive the SES of the right to control the quality of food products, assigning to it only the functions of monitoring the epidemiological situation in the country. These plans have found support from manufacturers and experts. According to market participants, the reform of the SES will bring our country closer to European standards, since in Europe the functions of control over the quality of food products are assigned to the veterinary service.

Yesterday, at a meeting with representatives of public health organizations, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said that the government would reform the sanitary epidemiological service. According to him, currently 53 thousand people work at the SES. “This is a whole army doing work that is not needed by the state. They are putting pressure on our entrepreneurs and businesses. We have decided to halve and seriously restructure this service,” the prime minister noted. He explained that the sanitary and epidemiological service was created in Soviet times to control the quality of food, but now these functions are not necessary, since the state has almost nothing to do with the production of food. “The manufacturer is responsible for the quality of products, so the functions of this service lose their meaning,” said Mykola Azarov. He proposed assigning to the SES only the functions of monitoring the epidemiological situation in the country and preventing epidemics.

According to Andrei Guk, a member of the public council under the Ministry of Health, an independent inspectorate should be created on the basis of the SES to monitor the quality of food products. “The work of the SES should not be of a permissive nature, but now it issues permits for businesses and checks compliance with sanitary standards. An independent inspection should monitor the manufacturer in matters of product quality, which will be able to suspend the business if violations are detected,” Mr. Guk explained to Kommersant. He believes that the SES should monitor air, water, soil samples and carry out radiation monitoring.

An independent inspectorate should be created on the basis of the SES to control the quality of food products

Chief State Sanitary Doctor Anatoly Ponomarenko is convinced that his service does not put pressure on businessmen: “When opening a business related to food production, the SES issues an operating permit based on the results of the inspection of the future enterprise. It confirms that the operation of the enterprise complies with sanitary standards. Subsequent work is monitored scheduled inspections. And as you understand, businessmen are always unhappy with control.” At the same time, Mr. Ponomarenko had a positive attitude towards the prospect of restructuring the sanitary and epidemiological service: “Changes of a functional and technical nature await us. The technical equipment of laboratories should be improved, divisions should be consolidated, creating inter-district laboratories in rural areas. This will allow for better processing of material samples, faster delivery of samples, and carrying out modern object research."

Experts believe that depriving the SES of the right to control the quality of food products will bring our country closer to European standards. In particular, Bogdan Andryushchenko, a member of the board of the Association of Veterinarians of Ukraine, explained to Kommersant that in the European Union, control over the quality of products is carried out by veterinary services: “One of the domestic enterprises producing semi-finished meat products was refused to export products to Italy due to the fact that quality control their products were carried out by SES workers, not veterinarians.”

Mr. Andryushchenko was supported by the General Director of Agromars CJSC (TM Gavrilovskie Kurchata) Alexey Marchenko: “The control functions were not balanced between the SES and the State Veterinary Service, so we were subjected to double checks. For control at the production level, we prefer to work with the veterinary commission, and not the SES cannot determine the health status of the animal and the quality of the meat.”

Yulia Ryabchun

The Cabinet of Ministers created unsanitary conditions