Safety of Milk and Meat Products in the Russian Federation in Dynamics: Results of Sanitary-Epidemiological Control (2013-2022)

Abstract

Background. The study addresses an extremely important issue, namely quality and safety of meat and milk products that are consumed daily by majority of the population in the Russian Federation.
 Aim. To investigate safety of animal food products (meat and milk products) in dynamics.
 Materials and methods. We performed retrospective analysis of the branch statistical report with the results of control (surveillance) over milk and meat products obtained in the period between 2013 and 2022. We estimated safety levels in dynamics and spatial distribution of shares of unsafe goods as per priority indicators.
 Results. Frequency of cases when mandatory requirements to safety of milk and meat products were violated amounted to 4.0 % and approximately 3.0 % accordingly. Hygienic requirements were most frequently violated as per microbiological and physical-chemical indicators, 3.84 % and 2.69 % accordingly for meat products and 4.2 % and 6.0 % accordingly for milk products. We analyzed safety of meat products in dynamics and established positive trends to be rather weak and multidirectional as per different indicators; as for milk products, shares of unsafe products went down as per all the standardized indicators except from sanitary-chemical ones. 
 Conclusion. Our study didn’t reveal any obvious positive dynamics (descending trends) in the shares of food product samples deviating from the safety standards. This means it is necessary to improve the current system for control (surveillance) over meat and milk products. More effective control (surveillance) can be provided by creating ‘risk profiles’ of a product with information about the most risky indicators to describe hazards associated with it. These indicators should be the first to be included into programs of product laboratory testing. In addition, it is vital to create regional registers of food products assigned into specific categories as per associated health risks. Such registers can also be used to select groups and types of products that should be covered by surveillance. The development of the risk-based surveillance can facilitate elimination of low quality and unsafe food products form the market.