We eat sugar tablets instead of chocolate, cheese that isn't cheese, we drink juices and brandy that aren't made from fruit, coffee containing barley and meat products full of soy

There's hardly a Serbian who doesn't start their day with a cup of coffee, but many of them don't realize that what they're drinking might not actually be coffee.

Coffee is just one of the consumer products on the market in Serbia that the State Audit Institution has found not to be what manufacturers claim they are.

Specifically, the SAI report compiled after the inspection of state institutions dealing with food safety in Serbia states that chocolate, cheese, brown bread, juices, and brandy were most often the subject of consumer deception in Serbia.

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Foto: Shutterstock

“The Department of Agricultural Inspection has cited examples of deception and misleading of consumers, which have been observed in practice, and these are deceptions regarding the nature, identity, characteristics, composition, quantity, and durability of the products. The most common examples are coffee with a substitute, fruit juice that is nectar, chocolate that is a sugar tablet, fruit brandy that is not made from fruit, brown bread that is not produced from T-1100 flour, plant-based "cheese" that is not cheese.” states the SAI Food Safety Report.

Petar Bogosavljević:

‘FOOD QUALITY IS GETTING WORSE’

Petar Bogosavljević, President of the Consumer Movement of Serbia, points out that the trend of deteriorating food quality is present worldwide under the pretext of various crises and for the sake of profit maximization:

“I'm not surprised by what the State Auditor found. We had a program of comparative testing and evaluation of food quality adopted with the competent authorities that was stopped in 2011 because we found that fermented milk products from a leading manufacturer did not meet the basic requirements for food quality. And with three meat products, they were far below what the manufacturers claimed through advertising. Since then, we have seen a rapid deterioration in the quality and safety of food in Serbia. The essence of the program was for consumers to receive information about the safety of specific manufacturers' food so they would know where and what to buy.”

Because of all this, the SAI recommended that the term "food fraud" be introduced within the legal framework.

“The number of incidents, or food frauds, is increasing from year to year, so 60% more incidents were identified between 2011 and 2012 than between 1980 and 2010,” states the SAI report.

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Foto: Printscreen

The report also states, among other things, that from 2019 until the end of 2022, a total of 12,436,771 kilograms and 464,806 litres of plant-origin food were recalled by order of the Agricultural Inspection. In the same period, 736 litres of beverages were destroyed.

FACTS

- 1.8 billion dinars were allocated from 2019 to 2022 for laboratory testing in other laboratories, and the capacities of the Directorate for National Reference Laboratories are not fully utilized.

- The utilization of devices for analysing the quality of milk in the National Reference Laboratory is 20%.

- 186 food frauds were discovered by inspections in Serbia in the period from 2019 to 2022.

*Data from the SAI Report

Miladin Ševarlić, a lecturer at the Faculty of Agriculture in Belgrade, points out that the State Auditor's report shows significant abuses in the food sector, especially in the sale of coffee with substitutes instead of coffee, barley, soy, chickpeas, and the like.

RECALLED

- Plant-origin food - 10,073,605 kg

- Plant-origin food - 3,790 l

- 464,806 - Alcohol, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages

- 149,383 l

*Data from the Agricultural Inspection for 2022.

“There is also the sale of cheese without milk, and especially honey that is not a bee product, but a craft or industrial one, based on sugar syrups and other additives, especially when labelled as so-called bakery honey for spreading sweet pastries, which does not contain any honey whatsoever. The same goes for meat products where sometimes soy and other products, even highly substituted ones, dominate instead of meat. This is also the case with some types of sausages,” says Ševarlić.