Quality control: retail chains and restaurants are waiting for mass inspections
Mass inspections of retail chains and restaurants may begin in Russia. Rospotrebnadzor will have the right to go for unscheduled monitoring for almost any reason and without prior approval from prosecutors within 24 hours after complaints from consumers, public figures or information from the media, Izvestia learned. Amendments to the law are being discussed in the State Duma, they are related to the increasing scandals around the quality of prepared food and catering.
Inspections of retail chains and restaurants
A source in the State Duma told Izvestia that Rospotrebnadzor plans to return the right to travel for inspections without prior approval from prosecutors. According to him, since 2020, the service cannot promptly travel to the facility as part of an unscheduled inspection, since this requires the approval of prosecutors. Moreover, in practice it is not so easy to do this: only in 30% of cases the prosecutor's office satisfies the requirements of sanitary doctors.
— Negotiations on this issue began on the government's site, now the parties use a more neutral zone — on the basis of the State Duma, — the source told the editorial board. — The new procedure, if agreed upon by all interested parties, will require amendments to art. 66 of the Law "On State Control" (248-FZ).
In practice, the work of Rospotrebnadzor will look like this: the service will not notify the company it is going to inspect, but will inform the prosecutors of its intention at the same time as the start of supervision, and not beforehand, as it is now. The reason may be information from the Honest Mark labeling system, as well as "information about an immediate threat of harm (damage) to legally protected values" (this may be a complaint from a consumer, a public figure, or a publication in the media). Moreover, the verification can begin within a day after the discovery of this information.
If Rospotrebnadzor gets such independence, the massive unscheduled control will primarily affect catering establishments, where there are many problems and public news against this background, as well as retail chains and light industry, the source told Izvestia.
Sergei Lisovsky, a United Russia deputy and deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee for the Protection of Competition, called the rational initiative to return Rospotrebnadzor to its powers, which were limited during the pandemic. Increasingly, the media began to write about recorded cases of poisoning, as well as the discovery of unsafe shoes and clothing. For example, in public catering, the practice of obtaining fictitious certificates for staff who come into contact with food products is widespread, which is a serious risk factor for consumers, the parliamentarian stressed.
The government advised Izvestia to contact Rospotrebnadzor, where they did not respond to the publication's request. The editorial board also sent questions to the Prosecutor General's Office and the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
The mechanism for coordinating inspections with the prosecutor's office is one of the key ones in assessing the presence or absence of risks of violations: during the approval process, the arguments of the control authorities are evaluated in justifying the inspection, the Ministry of Economic Development told Izvestia. Moreover, Rospotrebnadzor today carries out the most widespread types of control, being among the leaders in the number of inspections among the control departments in the country in this indicator, the agency clarified.
A significant proportion of refusals by the prosecutor's office to conduct unscheduled inspections are primarily related to poor-quality preparation of materials sent by the control authorities for approval, the office of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko told Izvestia. All incoming proposals from deputies and departments are considered without fail, they added.
The moratorium on inspections, including restrictions on unscheduled monitoring by Rospotrebnadzor, appeared during the pandemic, that is, in 2020, recalled Alexey Koitov, Chairman of the Consumer Union of the Russian Federation. We are talking about a rapid response, in which the service could go specifically for an off-plan check on signs of a violation or complaints from the public. The moratorium has been extended several times, and now it is valid until the end of 2025.
"However, at present, the upward dynamics of recorded violations in various industries inevitably raises the question of the transformation of the moratorium," Oleg Pavlov, head of the Public Consumer Initiative (OPI), added to Izvestia.
Can ready-made food be considered a risk zone
Rospotrebnadzor data for 2024 suggests that ready-made food and some catering establishments are gradually becoming a risk area. Thus, the number of samples of culinary products with violations in the Russian Federation is increasing, as a rule, we are talking about microbiological indicators. Sanitary doctors recorded the largest volume of them in the products of public catering enterprises, last year's figure was the peak in the last 10 years, according to the report of the service. So, in 2015, Rospotrebnadzor found 6.28% of samples with violations, and in 2024 — 6.89% of "dirty" samples. At the same time, the indicators for other products and formats only fell.
The most high-profile case in recent years was the outbreak of botulism in Russia in June 2024, which affected more than 400 people in 11 regions, including Moscow and the Moscow region, two died, and many ended up in hospitals. People got poisoned after eating beans for salads. It was brought to Russia from abroad, boiled and packed in a vacuum container: but the dish was prepared in violation of all possible rules and requirements at the production of Savon-K LLC. After that, the beans were added in the workshops of the ready-to-eat "Kitchen in the area", which did not pass the necessary registration with Rospotrebnadzor. People could not protect themselves from infection, and infected products did not differ from normal ones either in appearance, taste, or smell. After the mass poisoning, the activities of the Kitchen in the Area and the bean producer Savon-K were suspended. A criminal case was initiated under Article 238 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Provision of services that do not meet the requirements for the safety of life and health of consumers").
This year, it became known that Rospotrebnadzor went to unscheduled control of the Svetofor retail chain for the first time in several years. According to the first results, which the federal service submitted to the government in early April, 1,295 orders were issued: on the elimination of violations, on the development of programs to prevent harm, on the withdrawal of products from circulation. Svetofor then fulfilled 74% of them — 968. Another 325 prescriptions remained under the control of the service. As a result of the inspections, 185 protocols on violations of the Administrative Code were drawn up, and fines totaling 1.3 million rubles were imposed. The documents do not specify which specific articles the company violated. Rospotrebnadzor has not yet submitted a final report to the Cabinet of Ministers.
But the control situation in retail chains is exacerbated by completely non-obvious factors. So, Izvestia conducted its own investigation and found unsanitary conditions in hostels for employees of the Magnolia, Auchan, Atak and Metro networks. The promised free accommodation turned into overcrowded rooms and bedbugs.
Why it is important to return operational unscheduled control
The expansion of operational control capabilities is important primarily for those areas where the most serious risks to the safety and well-being of the population arise and are realized: the production and sale of food, catering, medical care, and others, Oleg Pavlov from OPI believes.
— If the moratorium is relaxed, then positive changes can be expected in the consumer market. The removal of excessive restrictions on unscheduled inspections will become an important factor in countering the practices of manufacturing and selling low—quality and unsafe goods, and providing services of inadequate quality," he explained. — At the same time, one of the main beneficiaries of the changes will be a conscientious business, which is now forced to compete with gray and black players who violate all sorts of rules and remain unpunished.
Frequent control measures can only affect malicious violators who systematically fail to comply with mandatory requirements and are identified using state information systems, the expert added.
— In the context of reduced state control of business and the lack of development of public institutions, business felt so at ease that the number of consumer complaints to the Consumer Union of the Russian Federation increased almost 1.5 times in 2024, and in judicial statistics, the increase in claims ranged from 1.5 to 2.5 times, depending on the category of cases, — told Izvestia" the chairman of the organization is Alexey Koitov. — The number of violations of mandatory requirements detected by Rospotrebnadzor per supervisory event increased 4-5 times a year earlier.
He stressed that the organization has repeatedly proposed to lawmakers and the government to make an exception to the moratorium for the consumer market or "at least such a sensitive part of it as food and catering."
Roskachestvo supported the initiative: It will increase the efficiency of quality and safety control of goods, the organization told Izvestia. If the service responds quickly to complaints and suspicions of violations without lengthy approvals, this will have a positive impact on consumers. This approach is in line with their interests, they noted. True, companies may face a small increase in costs due to the additional burden, but in the long run this approach will increase the competitiveness of high-quality goods.
Izvestia sent inquiries to the Association of Retail Companies and the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers.
One of the restaurateurs told Izvestia that the new powers of Rospotrebnadzor for the industry will result in an increase in the number of fines for the industry. After all, in practice it is very difficult to prove why a customer was poisoned, even if it happened in a cafe: after all, he simply could not wash his hands. Moreover, the federal service does not provide data on the ratio of the number of visitors in the industry and the number of infections after visits to catering establishments.
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