ABOUT THE QUALITY OF TRADITIONAL SPECIALITIES GUARANTEED IN VISEGRAD GROUP

The V4 countries have a lot of traditional foods and food products. In all of these countries, such products are important because they represent the nationality and originality of individual countries. Some of these foods and food products have been were included in EU legislation as traditional specialities guaranteed. This label should quaranteed that any product in this category has the same quality as traditional production. The question is, whether the quality of traditional specialities guaranteed (TSG) is really observed. In the research carried out previously by project applicants was found out that the quality is not observed in all cases and the differences were found between individual countries. The aim of project is to find the suitable way of TSG quality control applicable across all V4.

TEAM

Matej Pospiech

coordinator

Performing histological analyses of TSGs, Assistant professor of Department of Plant Origin Foodstuffs Hygiene and Technology, University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences Brno

mpospiech@vfu.cz

Jan Mačanga

Performing selected chemical analyses of TSGs

Assistant professor of Department hygiene and food industry technology University of Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy in Košice

jan.macanga@uvlf.sk

Maria Walczycka

Performing selected chemical analyses of TSGs

Assistant professor of Faculty of Food TechnologyUniversity of Agriculture in Krakow

mwalczycka@ar.krakow.pl

Ágnes Kovács

PPerforming selected chemical analyses of TSGs

Department engineer, food chemist, Head of Food Technological Laboratory, Department of Food Hygiene, University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest

kovacs.agnes@univet.hu

EVENT

  • Brno 19.10 – 20.10

  • Košice 21.11

    21st November 2016 13:00 p.m.
    University of Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy
    Komenského 73

  • Budapest 28.11

    28th November 2016 13:00 p.m.
    University of Veterinary Medicine
    István u. 2

  • Krakow 5.12

    5th December 2016 9:00 a.m.
    University of Agriculture in Krakow
    al. A. Mickiewicza 21

  • Brno 12.12

    12th December 2016 9:00 a.m.
    University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences
    Palackeho tr. 1946/1

Documents

Conference  

Plenary lecture  

Publication  

 

Foto

REPORT

Production and consumption of traditional national products and TSGs in V4 countries is heavily dependent on the price of the products. Furthermore, there is quite low awareness of traditional products and products with the TSG logo between the consumers and the sellers. In this context, spreading of basic and advanced knowledge concerning TSGs and other valuable traditional products throughout the V4 countries is necessary to support our own cultural heritage and to assure workplaces in micro and small enterprises (in the same region from which the workers come from). In order to achieve a successful placement of these products in the market network, it is also important to reach high quality comparable with the traditional national production of the particular country. The results of our analyses demonstrate that, primarily with the cheaper products, manufacturers often fail to use raw materials permitted or required by the regulations and they do not produce them in accordance with the Regulation on TSGs. It is therefore necessary that the supervisory authorities of V4 countries perform more frequent inspections, also random inspections in the market network.

After long discussions during plenary lectures, inspection bodies from individual V4 countries agreed to procede in accordance with the Regulation on TSGs and in case of additional financial sources to perform moreover random quality analyses. Information between the V4 inspection authorities is shared via European RASFF. Given the wide range of TSG products and national brands, inspection bodies are interested in gaining more information related to TSGs generally and to the detection techniques of their adulteration. Inspection bodies are also interested in gaining information about national protected products from foreign countries (within the V4) to be able to control their quality. This information is available in the published book.

TSGs and national speciality adulteration leads i.a. to different sensory quality of products as indicated by our results. In such case, consumers have a problem to find a product with identical name that would be of equal quality regardless of its manufacturer or production batch. According to the market research in the V4 countries, we can recommend to register the traditional products and, in addition, to reserve its name. In the V4 countries, using the registration without name reservation results in producing products without the TSG logo and thus in diverting away from the traditional manufacturing or the using of the traditional raw materials.

The collected information and the results from our own examinations are available in a book Quality of Traditional Specialities Guaranteed in Visegrad Group.

CONTACT

e-mail: mpospiech@vfu.cz

Address: University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences Brno
Palackeho tr. 1946/1, 612 42 Brno, telephone +420 541 562 704