English summary Ketenborging.

nl
After the horse meat scandal (in 2012), it is clear that food safety and integrity in the food
production chain must be better safeguarded. To this end, the Dutch Minister of Health, Welfare
and Sport and the Dutch Minister for Agriculture established the Food Confidence Task Force in
March 2013 together with the meat, dairy and animal feed sectors, with the objective of taking
measures to restore consumer confidence in food products. The Task Force presented its action
plan in June 2013 and has started the implementation of this plan.
A substantial element in regaining consumer confidence is securing food safety and integrity. This
means both public and private safeguarding of food safety and integrity are important in
implementing the Task Forces actions. Private quality schemes play an important role here. In
cooperation with the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA), the Task
Force has defined a set of criteria for quality schemes that must strengthen the private
safeguarding of food safety and especially food integrity. Transparency and the exchange of
information are key elements of these criteria.
Short description of the procedure:
Quality schemes are requested to include these criteria, as far as they have not yet been
included.
Quality schemes that have proven to comply with these criteria can be placed on the
website www.ketenborging.nl, to acknowledge that the quality scheme meets these criteria.
Businesses can check this website to see if their partners are certified by a quality
scheme that meets the abovementioned food safety and integrity criteria, and bring this in line
with their operations.
In its risk profile and as such in its supervision of individual businesses in the food
production sector, the NVWA takes into consideration whether or not the business is certified by a
quality scheme that has been proven to meet the criteria. This means that participation in such a
quality scheme can both enhance the businesss image and result in reduced supervision. This
entails a reduction in costs for the business, to the extent that the business must pay for this
supervision.
Through this initiative, the meat, dairy and animal feed sectors can show they are serious about
food safety and food integrity and act accordingly. The Task Force calls on you and your quality
scheme to cooperate with this project to enhance and safeguard food safety and food integrity.
To further inform you about the criteria, the functioning of the website, its consequences, how to
apply, and all other possible questions, the Task Force had organised an information session for
all managers of active quality schemes in the meat, dairy and animal feed supply chains in the
Netherlands. You can find the presentations of this information sessionhere.