Operational Food Import Inspection Compared to International Standards at Checkpoints in Lao PDR / Lao Medical Journal

ABSTRACT

Background and Rational@#Open trades in Lao PDR leads to many imported goods. Lacking capacity with international standards for inspecting and validating the imported goods at border check point would harm consumers.@*Methodology@#A descriptive study was conducted to assess the opinions and practice towards the staff of food and drug administration at 16 check points in Lao PDR using self-administered questionnaire from March to June 2015.@*Result@#The detection and validation were done based on food categories, which included raw food, canned food and other prepared food. There are 5 steps of validation: 1) checking documents at the checking point; 2) checking food; 3) seizing food; 4) releasing food and 5) reporting. The staff reported that documents should include name of food, label, certificate of food quality, certificate of laboratory sample analysis, certificate of importation permission, invoice and packaging list. Meanwhile, checking food includes the random selection of product for screening tests, particularly raw food. The suspected contaminated food will be verified at the main laboratory. Then, the suspected contaminated food was seized until the result of the laboratory are available. The foods from those who had the history of contaminated food importation should be randomly tested. The contaminated foods were recorded as blacklisted in order to facilitate next importation in detecting and validating the quality of food. Any update regulations should inform to the importers. The food and drug administrators at checkpoints had a good practice based on Lao regulations. However, some materials need to be improved. The detection form needs to be separated according to the food categories. They need more test kits, random detection guidelines, guidelines for laboratory tests, guidelines for detecting high-risk contaminated food, tools and materials of inspection. Moreover, there is a need of short and long-term training on using detection tool kits, random selection and reporting system.@*Conclusion@#There are different methods of inspection of imported food at checking point of Lao PDR. The international checking point had better quality than the other one.