Azerbaijan highly considers food security and export of fishery to EU

It has been possible to export caviar products produced from fish grown in Azerbaijani aquaculture to the countries of the European Union. According to Azernews, this was announced by Goshgar Tahmezli, the chairman of the Food Safety Agency of the Republic of Azerbaijan, at the "Regional Commission in the field of fisheries and aquaculture in Central Asia and the Caucasus" held in Baku on December 19. (CACFish) during his speech at the 8th Session.

According to him, developing ways to benefit from the country's water bioresources for balanced nutrition is of great importance in terms of transferring safe and accessible food to future generations.

"Fishing and other aquatic bioresource products with high nutritional value are considered urgent issues in solving the food problem in Azerbaijan. In addition to food security, increasing the production and export of fishery and other aquatic bioresource products in our country plays an important role in the country's economy. It is considered one of the priority directions to ensure the adaptation of normative legal acts on the safety of fisheries and other aquatic bioresource products, including standards, norms, and rules to the Codex Alimentarius Commission and other international standards and requirements.

G. Tahmezli said that as a result of fulfilling the requirements arising from the law "On Food Safety," which came into force on January 1, 2023, successes were achieved in ensuring the food safety of the mentioned products, state control of the food chain, and other areas:

"The project of a technical regulatory legal act on the mandatory application of the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) system has been prepared. Thus, large business entities carrying out production and processing activities must apply the HACCP system 2 years after the entry into force of the Law "On Food Safety," small and medium business entities 4 years, and microbusiness entities 6 years. Within the framework of the regulatory and control measures implemented by the Food Safety Agency of the Republic of Azerbaijan to increase the export potential of our country and to facilitate the export of food products produced in our republic to the European market, it was possible to export caviar products obtained from fish grown in aquaculture in Azerbaijan to the countries of the European Union.