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Guidelines in place for large-scale inspection and standards enforcement of flour mills
This indicator provides information on whether the procedures for mill inspection and enforcement of standards or regulations for large-scale fortification of wheat or maize flour are written and available.
An important early task for the fortification programme is to design, in collaboration with the milling industry and regulatory agencies, the mill-inspection guidelines that clearly describe how the fortification standards or regulations will be enforced by inspectors and what the consequences of non-compliance will be.
The government inspectors perform technical auditing and inspection activities at large-scale mills, to ensure that wheat or maize flour meets the specifications for nutrient quality and safety established in standards and regulations. During these visits, the performance of quality-assurance and quality-control activities done by the miller is verified and the conformity of the fortified flour with the technical standards or regulations can be corroborated through chemical analysis of flour samples taken at the mill.
Documentation that the procedures for mill inspection and enforcement of standards or regulations are written and available: Yes/No
Considerations for the calculations:
• For this indicator to be “Yes”, there must be documentation of both mill-inspection procedures and enforcement of standards or regulations.
• The documentation of procedures for mill inspection and standards/regulations enforcement may undergo revision during the life of the fortification programme.
• There may be more than one document that outlines the inspection and enforcement procedures.
• Subnational regions (such as departments, provinces or regions) may have the autonomy to develop their own documentation, in which case the indicator might be reported for each autonomous area separately. In these cases, it is useful to review national and subnational documents that influence procedures in a given geographic area, and to understand which guideline supersedes the other (e.g. national supersedes regional).
enforcement, external monitoring, inspection guidelines, quality assurance, quality control, regulations, regulatory monitoring, standards
Food fortification
Activity
Quality
School age children, 12-23 months, 24-35 months, 36-47 months, 48-59 months, 6-11 months, Adolescents, Men, Other (not any of the above, post-menopausal women, elderly), Women of reproductive age
None,
Copper, Folate, Iron, Niacin, Selenium, Vitamin A, Thiamine (vitamin B1), Vitamin B12, Riboflavin (vitamin B2), Vitamin B6, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Vitamin K, Zinc
Market-based
This indicator is typically collected once.
The documentation may be available from the national fortification alliance, the lead governmental agency in charge of overseeing fortification, or a national register of standards.
This indicator is easy and feasible to collect.
The existence of a document describing mill inspection and enforcement of standards or regulations does not guarantee that the document includes adequate or correct information, that mills will follow the regulations, or that inspectors will follow the inspection guidelines. Some documents may not clearly define the actions to be taken when non-compliance is found during a visit.
In a country, there are two regulatory documents that describe inspection and enforcement procedures for fortification of maize flour. One of the documents covers the following topics:
• the name of the food-control agency that has the authority to inspect, audit and sanction mills the quality assurance (QA) activities that should be undertaken by mills during production to ensure that the fortified maize flour will meet the standards.
• the quality-control tests and assessments completed by mills to document and prove that the fortified maize flour meets the standards
• the auditing and inspection activities and actions carried out by inspectors from the food-control agency to check for mill compliance with quality-assurance and quality-control procedures for fortified maize flour
• the analytical sampling and methods of laboratory tests protocol that the food control agency’s laboratory will follow to measure the concentration of nutrients in maize flour samples.
A second document covers the following topics:
• notifications of inspection results
• sanctions if mills are found in violation
• legal procedures for mills to fight sanctions.
For this indicator, the response was “Yes”, guidelines are in place for large-scale inspection and standards enforcement of maize-flour mills.
Allen L, de Benoist B, Dary O, Hurrell R, editors. Guidelines on food fortification with micronutrients. Geneva: World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; 2006 (http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/43412/1/9241594012_eng.pdf, accessed 30 October 2015).