2020: extra commitment to product safety

The Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) will deploy extra capacity in 2020 for the supervision of product safety and manure controls. The NVWA is also deploying extra people to be able to respond more quickly to reports in the field of food safety. In addition, there is extra capacity for work in connection with the new European Control Regulation (OCR) and the new Plant Health Regulation (PHR).

This is included in the NVWA 2020 annual plan that was presented to the House of Representatives today by the Ministers of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV) and for Medical Care and Sport (MZS).

Additional supervisory tasks

The NVWA will also be given more tasks in 2020. The NVWA will also check whether schools comply with the smoking ban on school playgrounds. Furthermore, the NVWA will carry out checks for the experiment with the legal supply, purchase and sale of cannabis (the so-called experiment closed coffeeshop chain).

Brexit

The Netherlands and the United Kingdom (UK) do a lot of business with each other. That is why the work for the NVWA will increase considerably in the event of a possible (hard) Brexit. For the inspection of products of animal origin alone, an increase of approximately 30% in the number of inspections is expected in the case of a hard Brexit. In recent years, the NVWA has made preparations for a possible hard Brexit, among other things by hiring approximately 100 veterinarians.

More supervision of internet trade

The online sale of goods, animals and services monitored by the NVWA has been increasing for years. It is expected that this growth will continue in the coming years. In 2019, the NVWA therefore made agreements with Marktplaats, bol.com and Facebook about the rapid removal of prohibited offers. In 2020, the NVWA wants to make similar agreements with other digital marketplaces and social media platforms. In 2020, the NVWA will also invest further in the automated monitoring of unsafe online offerings (web scraping).

Intelligence and Investigation Service

The NVWA has its own specialist investigation service: the NVWA Intelligence and Investigation Service (NVWA IOD). Annually, the NVWA IOD delivers about 20-30 investigations, varying in size. In 2020, the NVWA IOD will strengthen its approach to food fraud and its information and intelligence position.

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