The “EU Food Safety Project” executed under Contract 2021/423-933 - “Technical assistance to improve implementation of food safety standards and disease crisis preparedness”, signed on 19 May 2021, is funded under the EU Aid Programme for the Turkish Cypriot community (TCc). The local project office in the northern part of Nicosia has been operating since September 2021.
The project strives to support faster social and institutional development of the Turkish Cypriot community (TCc) and higher economic growth of its agri-food chain sector. The aim is to achieve improved food safety, public health, animal health, and protection of the environment, and to mitigate the impact of potential exotic animal diseases, in particular those posing imminent threats.
Goals:
- Improved functionality of the food safety system and awareness of the public and private sector (control bodies, FBOs, NGOs, municipalities, consumers) on food safety risks, risk prevention, and animal health
- Controls and infrastructure enhanced to align gradually with the EU and other international standards
- FBOs are able to exercise their roles and responsibilities for ensuring the safety of food products (functioning own checks, controls, compliance verification along the food chain)
- Milk channelling scheme in place
- System in place to ensure data collection, access to relevant information on FBOs, food safety risk assessment, planning of risk-based controls and achievement of traceability objectives
- Effective 'official' controls and compliance verification along the food chain are in place
- Health guarantees on animals are ensured through the implementation of effective monitoring programmes for zoonosis, zoonotic agents, residues, anti-microbial resistance, and progressive reduction of veterinary medicinal products
- Enhanced stakeholder capacities to effectively implement disease emergency response measures in the case of exotic animal disease outbreaks
Project phases and architecture are outlined as follows: