On 16 April 2021, Turkey's Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry published in Official Gazette numbered 31456, and of even effective date, the Regulation on Imitation and Adulteration of Food and Feed and Calculation of Administrative Fines (the "Regulation").
Under the Regulation,
- All transactions involving imitation and adulterated food and animal feed and sets associated fines for violations are prohibited.
- Adulteration is defined as removing, changing the amount of the content and nutrition value, which gives the product its main characteristics, fully or partially, or exchanging these with another, which does not have the same nutritional value.
- Imitation of the food or feed is giving the impression that a product has certain qualities as to its form, combination or qualities, which the product does not have, or make the product look another product.
- The burden of compliance rests with food and feed producers, importers, and sellers all of which may be audited officially from time to time. Fines for violations are determined case-by-case with reference to violator's prior year's gross revenue and calculated according to the formula provided in the Regulation.
The full text of the regulation is available at this link. (Only available in Turkish).
Information first published in the MA | Gazette, a fortnightly legal update newsletter produced by Moroglu Arseven.
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