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| Agenda Item 6.1 | Conference Room Document 9 English only |
second fao/who global forum of food safety regulators
Bangkok, Thailand, 12-14 October 2004
Prepared by Brazil
This document presents the Brazilian background on the process of strengthening the regulatory system and inspection of the production process, marketing and food consumption in Brazil.
According to a new policy approach, the Brazilian State takes charge of a regulatory role, leaving with the productive sector, whether it is the food industry or the retailing food market, the responsibility for ensuring the innocuousness of those foods.
The regulatory and official inspection actions are responsible for creating the necessary environment so that the production processes become more efficient and effective, and stimulate the productive sector to supply safe products with the essential quality, following a process of free market under appropriate regulation.
The controlling boundary for foods in Brazil is assembled and managed by several actors, with the eminence of the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply, and also the Ministry of Industry, Development and Trade. This boundary has been evaluated and revised, regarding the evolution of the production process and of economic and social development in Brazil, and has been developed from an isolated system of regulations and actions and leading to a broader and rather integrated system.
Moreover, the government has been pursuing the development of more efficient forms of organization for the management of the actions, in the midst of institutions that are endowed with managerial resources and autonomy.
In this regard, in 1999 the National Health Surveillance Agency - ANVISA was created. Its legacy lives to protect and promote population's health, ensuring the safety of products and services and stimulating the population to take part in developing access to it.
For such, aside from the definition of the Agency's mandate and action focus, the regulatory decisions are always taken on the basis of the three pillars as follows, which are recognized as the values of ANVISA: knowledge, transparency and accountability.
The urge for knowledge to move forward in the management process of health surveillance actions has led ANVISA to promote constant training of its labour force as well as of the human resources of the National Health Surveillance System, which includes professionals from the states, municipalities and the Federal District. To this end, partnerships are being established with several education and research institutions.
We highlight the established partnership with the University of Brasilia, by means of the post-graduation Specialization Course in Health Surveillance, which has graduated over 300 specialists, as well as the Pan-American Health Organization, through the Pan-American Institute for Food Protection and Zoonosis – INPAZ, with courses for Technicians and Auditors in Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points- HACCP, providing training for other 1,254 health surveillance technicians at state and municipal levels with administration bonds.
In this context, it is pointed out the partnership with the National Industrial Training Service – SENAI, which has already allowed the training of over 3,500 technicians from the food industry and also from the food services enterprises regarding the implementation of the HACCP methodology in their activities.
All this qualification effort towards human resources foresees the generation of the necessary critical mass for the implementation of new regulations aiming at the innocuousness of foods. Currently, there already exists a national-wide action, known as "Safe Foods Program", disseminating knowledge and providing guidance to small and medium-sized food enterprises related to good manufacturing and handling practices, allowing an increased safe foods supply for the consumption of the population.
The incorporation of knowledge and technological information requires from the sanitary surveillance professionals a constant updating of knowledge. Considering all this, ANVISA established, in partnership with the Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Information Center - BIREME, an online access to the main international sources of health information, including bibliographical collections, catalogues of websites related to health surveillance and directories of regulatory and research institutions from several countries, called Portal for Scientific Information on Health Surveillance.
The inclusion of risk analysis procedures in health surveillance activities is one of the milestones in the management of the Agency.
This inclusion allowed the Agency to initiate a pioneering and innovative process of deregulation of registration for a significant number of food groups, assessed as being of low risk for human consumption. Such action allows the Agency to employ its resources more efficiently and effectively, concentrating efforts in the groups of products that might pose greater risk.
This focus on risk analysis allows the Agency to update the existing regulatory framework, working in partnership with a significant number of education and scientific and technological research institutions, within the country and abroad.
Currently, the Agency relies on a Food Technical Chamber with representatives from seven universities; and also a Technical-Scientific Commission on Functional Foods for evaluation of new foods and claims on labels, with representatives from nine other universities, and technical groups with specialists in the areas of food additives, packing materials in contact with foods and food safety assessment, with representatives from Universities and Research Centers.
Another very relevant aspect to be considered is transparency in the regulation process, through the mechanism of participation of the food producers, consumers and professional associations in the process of building a regulation, by means of an open public consultation with the proposal to gather inputs from segments with an interest in the regulation of what is being proposed.
The issue of decentralization of regulation and sanitary inspection activities in countries with large territories such as Brazil also deserves mention. Brazil has a system called Unified Health System – SUS, in which all health organizations take part, whether public or private, the latter in a supplementary manner. ANVISA is one of the organizations in this system. It operates in a decentralized manner, with responsibilities shared among the Federal Government, the State Governments, the Federal District Government and the Municipal Governments.
Another extreme important issue, due to its great magnitude is the increasing need to understand the external environment, in the midst of the participation in international forums such as the Codex Alimentarius, Mercosul - the Free Trade Agreement between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, the SPS Agreement, the Biodiversity Convention – Cartagena Protocol and other international specific agreements. The understanding of the external environment allows the productive sector and exporters to achieve increasing participation in international food trade.
An efficient system of official food safety control services requires a narrow co-operation from all the interested sectors, whether in the Government or in the Regulated Sector, as well as organized segments of civil society, particularly the consumer defense associations. It belongs to the Government to regulate and create a favourable environment for the development of productive activity, upholding increased and varied food production while ensuring scientific development and incorporation of technologies that allow greater efficiency in production and trade management activities. It belongs to the productive sector to identify opportunities for development, and to organized civil society to guide the government and the consumers regarding its needs, with a view to the general well being.
The purpose of this policy is: