Ukraine will scale up digital raw milk control program
A pilot project to implement a raw milk control program will be scaled up to the national level. This was announced by the head of the State Food and Consumer Service Vladyslava Magaletska during a webinar organized by the Swiss-Ukrainian program "Development of trade with added value in the organic and dairy sectors of Ukraine," Ukrinform reports.
"We support implementation of the pilot project in all regions of Ukraine and assure that we will do everything possible for its effective implementation," said Magaletska.
She noted that six more oblasts are now ready to join the pilot project "Raw Milk Control Program", which is being implemented in Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, Mykolaiv and Poltava oblasts. They will be: Khmelnytsky, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Volyn, and Sumy.
According to Magaletska, expansion of the project to the whole country will enable application of uniform standards to all suppliers of raw milk. The project has developed a "Dairy Module" – online database for automatic collection of research results, calculation of indicators of the level of total bacterial contamination, and the number of somatic cells.
"We want the Dairy Module to be easy to use and meet all stakeholder expectations. Cooperation with regional producers, farmers and specialists of the State Food and Consumer Service will help to understand what changes are to be made for the effective operation of the "Dairy Module", - said the head of the department.
The Swiss-Ukrainian program "Development of Trade with Higher Value Added in the Organic and Dairy Sectors of Ukraine" is funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), with involvement of the private sector of Ukraine. The program is implemented by the Research Institute for Organic Agriculture (FiBL, Switzerland) in partnership with SAFOSO AG (Switzerland), a Swiss consulting company working in the field of food safety from healthy animals.
The program started in August 2019 and will run until June 2023.