AUV director warns more inspections on illegal markets

Executive director of the Food and Veterinary Agency (AUV) Flamur Kadriu, has warned that this agency will continue inspections of markets where animal slaughter is done illegally.

All of this, according to him, is being done in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture, with the very fact that animal diseases are not transmitted to citizens.

He claims that slaughtering animals should be done on authorized slaughter, which meets sanitation conditions.

We'll continue with inspections, we've had timely inspections before. We're always facing difficult situations, of course different operators, different people have a way of life, but we regret to follow the rules that are written”.

Now unfortunately or fortunately those rules we haven't invented ourselves but there are international standards which for extremely important reasons have been set. The slaughter of animals must be done only at authorized slaughterhouses, which meet the extremely good conditions for reasons not to carry disease from animals to animals. Therefore, it is important that the slaughtering of animals in illegal markets, in spaces where there are no hygienic conditions, occurs individually to endanger public health”, he said.

He said the challenge agency is the small number of inspectors, according to him, with 29 veterinarian inspectors currently being insufficient to respond to all requests.

Kadriu said that for this, only seven requests have been approved.

The number of inspectors is always bad enough, especially as far as slaughter is concerned, the number of veterinarian inspectors should be sufficient. We don't have enough, we have a total of 29 veterinarian inspectors who have many other obligations besides controlling the territory of Kosovo”.

We at budgetary hearings have requested that we have 20 additional inspectors covering our minimum demands that with a more pressing commitment we meet all market needs, so that the consumer is safe in products he consumes. We have seven new positions approved that unfortunately we have to share more profiles of the inspection. We have enough budgets to implement those projects we have”, he said.

He said that in one year, more than 65 thousand inspections are conducted and that the largest number is on the border.

We have a huge number of inspections, considering that we have inspectors and borderes, all border crossing points, we have internal inspections, veterinarians, sanitation. It means the total number of inspections reaches over 65 thousand inspections during the year, they are divided into different sectors. Border sectors have a slightly larger number. The inspection of smoking has increased inspections”, he said. / EO