Russia: Rospotrebnadzor asked to remove fruit, veg expiration date
The Federal Service Rospotrebnadzor has received a petition from the Association of Retail Compani…The Federal Service Rospotrebnadzor has received a petition from the Association of Retail Companies (AKORT) requesting changes to the technical regulations of the Customs Union. Retailers suggested making the indication of the expiry date in documents and on the packaging of a number of products, namely fruits, vegetables, berries, mushrooms and greens, optional.
In Chairman of the presidium of AKORT, Ilya Lomakin-Rumyantsev's letter to the head of Rospotrebnadzor, he writes that in the current situation, retailers are required to indicate the expiration date of all products in accordance with Regulation 4.1 of the Customs Union. Before this document came into force, expiration dates were regulated by a government decree.
"For example, in the decree there was no such group as ‘’fresh fruit, mushrooms, berries, vegetables", with the exception of washed fresh vegetables or peeled and packaged, with or without the addition of preservatives," said Lomakin-Rumyantsev.
Products past the expiration date must be withdrawn from circulation. This in turn leads to a reduction in the stocks of fruit and vegetable in the warehouses of retailers and wastage.
It is noted that the current methodology determining the expiration date does not contain information from the sanitary-epidemiological study which looks at the expiration dates for fresh crop products. Because of this, retail chains suggest making the expiration dates optional for fresh fruits and vegetables.