The former head of the Farmers’ Union, Eduart Sharka, spoke about the blockage of Albanian mandarins by the EU.
According to Sharka, this was expected because almost every three months, he says, the EU’s control system detects such cases.
He raised the alarm, stating that this pesticide had been banned by law by the EU for 4 years and was also prohibited in our country.
“I expected this, not because of the mandarins, but because almost every three months we have such cases where the European Union Food Safety Control System occasionally finds our products exceeding the EU standards for certain pesticides. This case is alarming because a substance has been found that has been removed from the EU’s list of approved pesticides for 4 years, and is also banned in our country. Another issue is that we are dealing with fruit, and what is alarming for us is that we only face this fact when we are checked by the EU, and the big question arises: Are we being checked in our own country, and why isn’t it discovered here? This means that the Food Safety Authority (AKU) has become an institution that acts post factum. That is to say, the AKU always acts after the EU’s findings, and its role has been reduced to just imposing fines after the EU’s discoveries. Of course, these mandarins circulate in our market and in Kosovo, but hundreds of tons have been exported, and most have been found to be compliant. This doesn’t lower the alarm, but not everything is negative. Still, these products circulate in our market and Kosovo’s,” said Eduart Sharka.
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