Legal Regulation of the Quality and Safety of Food Products: Analysis of the Current State in the Context of Ensuring National Security of Russia

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the current state of the organizational and legal mechanism for ensuring the quality and safety of food products. Ensuring the quality and safety of food products is an urgent task of the Russian state, the solution of which depends on ensuring the country's national security. Noting the importance of the qualitative characteristics of food products for the realization of such national interests as improving the quality of life, strengthening the health of the population, ensuring stable demographic development of the country, the authors draw attention to the underestimation of this factor by the Russian legislator in terms of ensuring national security. Recognizing that the decline in the quality of consumer goods is a threat to national interests, the legislator, however, does not attach the issue of ensuring the quality and safety of food products of independent significance, preferring to solve it within the framework of more general tasks.In the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation, the task of ensuring the quality and safety of food products is not recognized as a strategic national priority, which significantly limits the legal and organizational capabilities to solve this problem. In addition, imperfect legal regulation of food production and turnover creates significant difficulties. The regulatory framework in this area does not allow building an effective food quality management system, which necessity is dictated by the needs of ensuring Russia's national security. Improving the organizational and legal mechanisms for ensuring the quality and safety of food products is possible by harmonizing the requirements for their quality and safety, which involves changing the current system of technical regulation based on the predominant guarantee of product safety indicators to the detriment of its quality.