About 300 thousand pounds of waste food products

According to them, summer season is one of the seasons when consumers can face more in products that do not meet the consumer conditions.

These organizations, as well as citizens, present their concerns about the questionable quality of products. They say they have encountered suspicious products and with expired deadlines on the Kosovo market.

Eczena Murati, a citizen, shows that she has encountered suspicious products at one of the stores where she supplies food.

There were times when I bought an expired product or a product that had deadlines, but when it was opened you couldn't wear it. During the summer season, especially, there are products that are not stored in adequate temperatures. I've made complaints, but not every time the market's missed”, she says.

The head of the Nongovernmental Organisation “Consumer”, Ceatin Kacanik, in a campaign for Radio Free Europe, says there is still no secure level of products that citizens consume in Kosovo.

The consumer still in Kosovo is not aware of what they consume. State mechanisms are not fulfilling their obligation to inform the citizen, the consumer, and to know about products. During the summer season when temperatures rise, there are products everywhere that are stored at inadequate temperatures and products that should not be consumed”.

Kosovo's Food and Veterinary Agency is doing its job, but they also complain they don't have enough inspectors to do the right checks. In Kosovo there are irresponsible institutions related to consumer protection”, Kacanik says.

Representatives of the Food and Veterinary Agency, who are key to controlling food in Kosovo, assure citizens of quality products.

This agency has eliminated some 300 thousand pounds of food products in six months, mainly meat and meat products, then milk and milk products that have not met the consumer conditions.

Lamir Thaci, spokesman at the Food and Veterinary Agency in a campaign for Radio Free Europe, says inspectors are on the ground constantly and do control of economic operators so that suspicious products do not fall into consumer hands.

The Food and Veterinary Agency in each case, when faced with suspicious products that have not met the conditions for consumption on the basis of laws in power, those products have been eliminated. Within this year, products with animal origin have been eliminated from 276,301kg of meat, meat products and milk, milk products”, Thaci points out.

The products of the suspicious quality that have been eliminated, Thaci points out, have been encountered during regular AWK checks, then by reports by citizens when facing suspicious products, but even in some cases when economic operators themselves announce cases when products they have on the market should be destroyed due to deadlines.

AUVK requires that citizens report such cases and also urged them to be cautious during the acquisitions.

During the summer season, Thaci adds, inspections are more frequent due to high temperatures and failure to preserve products under adequate conditions from economic operators.

Every year on national control plans, it is envisioned that in the summer season, we increase control of products that require adequate conservation conditions at low temperatures, and our focus is on products subjecting to the refrigerator temperature regimes that are milk meat products and other products that require conservation according to the rules and descriptions of product declaration”, Thaci says.

He adds that when suspicious quality products have met, they have sent papers to the tribunal, but that, according to him, there are delays in examining such cases by the courts.

Otherwise, institutional commitment to consumer protection in Kosovo was constantly demanded by international mechanisms.