Kazakhstan and foreign food industry

Safety and quality of domestic food products is not only a problem of consumers. Today it is the defining parameters of competitiveness of the country, after all our food industry will be tested for durability in the WTO soon. Therefore the branch is recognized priority and in realization of "Strategy-50". The food sector of our economy doesn't conform to requirements of the global market, and in this look it can't be called competitive. Our agricultural products are processed only at the first stage; practically there is no deep processing. Such types of the substances demanded in the food industry as pectin, gelatin, lemon and acetic acids, vanillin, proteinaceous concentrates and so on aren't issued. In embryo there is an industrial production of dietary supplements to food, so-called dietary supplements, and specialized treatment-and-prophylactic food. Their production, by the way, is equated on profitability to pharmaceutical business. Meanwhile Kazakhstan possesses rich raw stocks, such as: the mural breeding, beekeeping is a lot of at us medicinal herbs – these resources allow to adjust potentially powerful, competitive sector of the food industry. However, the food industry at the very least, but it's still developing in Kazakhstan. In the past 10 years, many kinds of domestic products for the domestic market drove imports. For example: beverages - almost all domestic production and sausage too. Previously, in our market dominated by Russian products, and now the main suppliers - our entrepreneurs. 90 percent of table salt – is also Kazakhstan origin, more than for 100 percent are satisfied requirements with domestic mineral waters and so on. Also our confectionery production, dairy products, separate types of canned food are competitive. In the food sector, there is a weak link - a children's food. In Kazakhstan, almost no one company which would produce them, although the country has a fairly good performance on fertility. According to reasoning’s of debating club “Bayterek”: "Our country could expand significantly export due to production of national food which will be demanded abroad. For example, mares, camel, goat milk, koumiss, shubat and other drinks, includes on a grain basis, a horse-meat. Unfortunately, this sector for a foreign market practically doesn't work for us. The industrial production using high technologies and the modern equipment isn't arranged. The country is the main supplier of flour to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and it would be possible to expand deliveries to other countries …" (the vice-president of the Kazakh academy of food Igor TSOI.) [3] There are also other problems of our food production. Based on the information from the adviser to the chairman of the Board of JSC "Center for Marketing and Analytical Research" Saule Akhmetova, for integration into the global market, we must adhere to international standards, in particular ISO 22000, which is included in the list of mandatory requirements for any country, and allows you to track the process production from the provider to the exit side, up to the packaging. But the difficulty is that we have never had a well-functioning control system, we can check the individual links, for example, trade or the conditions of storage, but it is impossible to trace the raw materials: from where it was taken and what it was quality at the biochemical level. This is a big problem, so we cannot do without government assistance, but it is able to track the entire chain. The main problem is the low level of knowledge, not only international standards, but also requirements in general. Faced with this enterprise when you start to be interested in questions of food safety. There is such a collection - "Codex Alimentarius", it gathers hygiene standards of food production. As it turns out, we have a few people who know and use this collection. According to Saule Akhmetova's words, creation of the new standards approached more to the international requirements to increase competitiveness of our production on a world scale. "The most important, different tastes of products are necessary to the producer for the market, for the competition. We don't say that it is necessary to think out new standards – it is that they need to be brought into accord with the international requirements. Remember, we regulated each small screw, each detail, but quality wasn't. And safety according to the international standards is as the entrance ticket for the world market. There is no safety – won't trade. Laws are simple." [3] What actually means for Kazakhstan citizens, a qualitative product? The qualitative product is the product adequate to requirements of the market. Production according to the standard containing requirements taking into account achievements of scientific and technical progress in this area – production key to success in the market. That is why it is necessary to harmonize standards with the international analogs. Besides, the Law "About Safety of Food Products" will be adopted soon. It is closest to similar European; moreover, there is very important point – legal criteria of reference of production to environmentally friendly. And in parallel there is a work on harmonization of standards at the national level and within branch standardization. But the concept of quality is subjective, at least for Kazakh entrepreneurs and the government. According to the president of the Association for Consumer Protection Svetlana Savchenko: "For us this is the most satisfying consumer expectations. We think that the candy "Red Riding Hood" or pasteurized milk must be such that we are used to back in the old days and not otherwise. Laws can be good as much as necessary, but they won't work until corruption in courts is eradicated. To prove, for example, that the person poisoned with low-quality sausage, the court needs to submit analyses of washout of a stomach where there has to be this sausage. The second – it still has to have piece of sausage; the third – the check where date and time of purchase are specified, that is whether not specially it held this sausage days on a window sill? All this often can't almost be collected". [3] After all the problems identified in the development of the food industry, it revealed an important question: can we protect consumers from unscrupulous food producers? If consumer organizations go to court with a complaint against the major manufacturers, the Court often gets to the side of the producers, or "providers of services." On the one hand, are afraid of precedent, with another – these businessmen "part", as they say. Here complex work not only Committee on technical regulation is necessary. That is why in Germany and in all Europe, makes qualitative goods. Because there are the powerful consumer movements, which is engaged in a general compulsory education and promotion. Also the state finances it. But what it is necessary to undertake that the laws concerning safety of foodstuff were executed strictly? It is necessary to toughen the Code of Administrative Offences. The committee on technical regulation and metrology prepared offers on toughening of measures of administrative influence for violation of the obligatory requirements including connected with deceptive practice, for example, for violation of requirements for marking. Speaking about natural, environmentally friendly products, and containing artificial components it is necessary to remember one problem. The population of the earth increases: not so long ago there were four and a half billion, today – already more than six. It is necessary to feed with something all? That is absolutely natural products, probably, can't be for all, as well as there are no people with the identical income at us. Natural products in the near future will cost very much, as production their expensive. And depending on the income everyone will get these or those food. Today processes of production of food products change:

· Separate production cycles are reduced,

· There is a replacement of separate,

· Traditional components of a product,

· The mass of a product yield at the expense of increase in a share of water increases.

As all of you understand that natural products won't be enough for all, and they not to everyone on a pocket. Means there have to be substitutes which, first, shouldn't be hazardous to health, and, secondly, correspond natural on a nutrition value. In it the main task of the state in technical regulation of food products. Control of safety of food is a public affair. This requires national and regional programs for the development of the food industry. And in parallel need to strengthen food safety. In general, this function of the state. If the government introduced a monopoly on quality control, and would be in front of consumers, it would provide material and technical base of laboratories that issue certificates. In Kazakhstan only one laboratory defines the content of vitamins and fatty acids. We have no laboratory which defines hormones and antibiotics, nitrogen dioxide. We don't possess such technical capabilities. Also it is necessary to create uniform interdepartmental body. Unfortunately, in our country absolutely there is no monitoring of quality of food. Nobody collects a database, anywhere it isn't published – these things should be solved. The harmonization of domestic standards with international ones should participate, entrepreneurs themselves. International practice is that the government does not develop standards - it makes the enterprise or any industry association. There are many options. [3]

Again our mentality: we are used to, that the state should be an administrator of everything, but as we see it moving away from such functions. So the main conclusion: all in our hands - both consumers and producers. It is impossible to designate precisely border between the consumer and the producer. The care of that and others is, finally, mutual enrichment and essentially new quality of production of the food industry. On the other hand, absence of reliable standards of safety which correspond to the checked international practice generates a set of problems for both parties. Feedback represented by the state and public organizations on the basis of which accurate mechanisms of performance of laws on quality and safety of food products and high consumer culture of the population will be created is necessary.