What rights do you have as a consumer? But above all, what are your obligations?

Today we celebrate the World Consumer Rights Day. The following text presents consumer rights that fall under the remit of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food, and the Administration for Food Safety, Veterinary Sector and Plant Protection (a body within the Ministry).The right to safe food: all stakeholders in the agri-food chain share the responsibility for ensuring food safetyFood is considered safe when it is suitable for consumption and does not have any adverse impact on our health. This is one of the basic consumer rights. Food safety needs to be guaranteed along the entire "agri-food chain", including every stage of food production and processing and food distribution to consumers. Everyone shares the responsibility for ensuring safety within their competences. Knowledge, cooperation and communication between all stakeholders are crucial.Food safety is guaranteed by food business operators (food producers and processors, distributors, retailers, etc.) It is essential to draft and implement a relevant European and national legislation, representing a legal base for the work of food business operators and official inspections.In order to ensure food safety, it is necessary to fulfil the requirements of food law and to implement good practices in agriculture, production, retail, transport, storage, and hygiene. This must be based on the expertise of different research institutions and laboratories.Despite being the last part of the agri-food chain, consumers are very important. It is necessary to provide consumers with appropriate information, to raise their awareness, and to train and educate them. The appropriate food-handling practices during or after the purchase of foodstuffs reflect our mutual responsibility. It is necessary to adopt good hygiene practice: to follow hygiene practices for hands, food containers and utensils, to ensure an appropriate storage temperature, to prevent cross-contamination of foods (separating clean and unclean tasks), and to guarantee an appropriate heat treatment of foodstuffs.The right to information: consumer information must be provided and consumers are therefore advised to read food labelsOne of the goals of the European food law is to improve the possibilities of consumers to take better decisions, benefiting their health. It is especially important that consumers have appropriate information on foodstuffs when they choose their everyday food. Food business operators are responsible for the appropriate food labelling and inspection services verify compliance of the labelling with food laws as part of their official inspections.Food labelling, which is any information on the food label, must be comprehensible to an average consumer and it should not mislead them. Producers and other food business operators should label and market food products in a fair and understandable way in accordance with the legislation. In the framework of an official inspection, inspectors verify compliance of food labelling and marketing to examine if they are misleading to consumers. However, consumers are responsible to read the labelling and thus acquire information on the characteristics of foodstuffs that we wish to choose and include in our menu.Contemporary information technology enables consumers to access a large number of information. On the one hand, this helps to raise their awareness, but on the other hand, the abundance of information makes it difficult to choose a correct, independent and useful information.Consumers must therefore retain reliable information on foodstuffs, read the labels before buying the products, and report all potential misleading practices and irregularities to the Administration for Food Safety, Veterinary Sector and Plant Protection (gp.uvhvvr@gov.si).