Electronic veterinary certification: timing of introduction, pros and cons. Peter boycotts the electronic certification system "Mercury" Why should a school register in the veterinary system

The Mercury system is implemented as a web application in which. users interact with the system via the Internet. Thanks to this, all users always have access to up-to-date information.
The main feature of the system is that it is based on a process approach; without entering information at the input, it is impossible to issue a veterinary accompanying document (VSD) for sale or movement in the system and to remove the controlled goods from the system at the end of the product’s life.
The entrance to the "Mercury" system is to enter information about the production batch for domestic products, for imports - the presence of a veterinary certificate issued in the "Mercury" system. Thus, each subsequent VSD is drawn up on the basis of the previous one, thus building a chain along which you can track the full path of movement of goods from the moment of production (import) to the final point (retail outlet, or disposal).
Starting from March 1, 2015, it will be possible to issue veterinary accompanying documents in electronic form, but so far there is no regulatory document that would oblige manufacturers of products controlled by the state veterinary supervision to apply a barcode to the packaging, although they can already do this at will.

- Sergey Vladimirovich, what products fall into the zone of veterinary control and who carries it out?

All products of animal origin fall under veterinary control: fish, meat, milk, honey, cheese, etc. The state veterinary control system consists of Rosselkhoznadzor, veterinary services of the constituent entities of Russia, as well as veterinary services in each power ministry. Rosselkhoznadzor exercises control at the state border and at seaports, and the subject services subordinate to the regional governor already work on the ground. They interact with the Ministry of Agriculture through a complex system of regulations and reporting, and among themselves solely on the basis of goodwill. The work of the veterinary services of the Ministry of Defense, the Federal Penitentiary Service, the FSO, the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs is generally a sealed secret. In total, there are 91 self-sufficient decision-making centers for veterinary control.

- How is veterinary control carried out today?

Unfortunately, control today is fragmented and does not meet modern economic conditions. Much of the blame for this lies with the outdated veterinary certification system. Certification today is a visual inspection of products, verification of documents, organoleptic examination, which allows us to generally confirm: the products are obtained from fish or animals that are safe in veterinary and sanitary terms and are suitable for consumption. Based on the results of the examination, the veterinarian issues a corresponding document - a veterinary certificate. If necessary, product samples are sent for laboratory testing.
The problem is that the subjective approach on the part of veterinary specialists and the lack of a unified system for recording legally significant actions with products have distorted the very essence of veterinary certification - traceability from the place of origin and confirmation of its safety. Today, most often, these pieces of paper are issued as if on an assembly line, based on a set of other documents, and in many places there is no real verification procedure: there is not enough effort, time, or resources for it. But if they want, they can, and vice versa, instead of a conveyor, arrange a thorough inspection of the entire batch and, at each shipment, they will certainly require laboratory tests. Naturally, everything is at the expense of the owner of the cargo. “Selective approach” is how one can characterize the system as a whole.

- Is it true to say that paper veterinary certification has become obsolete?

You see, a number of problems have accumulated with paper certification. Forms are counterfeited, despite the high degree of security; they can, for example, be printed in a local printing house and used

Sergey Gudkov Executive Director of the Fishing Union

Electronic veterinary certification since 2018 is a set of mandatory actions for the preparation of veterinary accompanying documents in a special automated system. What kind of system is this and what are the nuances of electronic certification, find out from our material.

Mandatory veterinary certification (what is it and what are its advantages)

Electronic veterinary certification was introduced on July 1, 2018 (law dated July 13, 2015 No. 243-FZ). Before this date, the veterinary certification system also worked, but was carried out in paper form.

Let's figure out what this mandatory electronic veterinary certification is.

Veterinary certification means checking products for safety and suitability for consumption along the entire chain of work with the product - from the manufacturer to the end consumer.

The introduction of electronic veterinary certification since 2018 provides for the execution of all veterinary accompanying documents in electronic form in a special automated system. Participants in the production and circulation of regulated goods are required to register there.

Important advantages of the system for processing veterinary accompanying documents in electronic form:

automation of product traceability in production and circulation;
the ability to verify the authenticity and status of a certificate in public access;
control of legal production and circulation of raw materials and products;
the possibility of recalling unsafe products from the distribution network;
participants in electronic veterinary certification save money (compared to the costs of issuing paper forms);
implementation of protection of manufacturers from product counterfeiting;
providing consumers with state guarantees of food safety.

Find out what a certificate of origin of goods looks like in the ST-1 form and why it is needed .

The postponement of the start date for electronic veterinary certification is stated in Law No. 431-FZ dated December 28, 2017. This regulatory legal act moved the date of introduction of mandatory electronic certification from 01/01/2018 (law of 07/13/2015 No. 243-FZ) to 07/01/2018.

Law No. 431-FZ not only moved up the previously scheduled deadlines, but also provided for situations when it is permissible to replace an electronic certificate with a paper one:

What information is classified as an official secret, see this publications .

What is considered to be veterinary accompanying documents (hereinafter referred to as VSD) and what is their purpose, see the figure:

Distinctive features of electronic VSD:

formalized with the help of a special FSIS in the field of veterinary medicine;
has a unique identification number;
may be in one of the following states:

Electronic VSDs are issued for goods included in a special list:

How to organize electronic document flow in a company, we will tell you in this material .

Results

The widespread introduction of electronic veterinary certification from 2018 will make it possible to control food products along the entire producer-consumer chain. Electronic veterinary accompanying documents are processed in a special automated system. All participants in the production and circulation of regulated goods are required to register.

Deputy Head of Rosselkhoznadzor Nikolay Vlasov

Attention employees
public authorities
in the field of veterinary medicine
and participants in production and turnover
products of animal origin

Dear ladies and gentlemen, colleagues,

I inform you that the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia, with the participation of Rosselkhoznadzor, in connection with the imminent consideration within the framework of the legislative process of changes to the Federal Law “On Veterinary Medicine”, which is aimed at the regulatory settlement of issues related to veterinary certification and related procedures, has begun a new stage of work on preparation of regulations regulating these processes.

This work has begun right now because it was not possible to create these acts before the adoption of these changes to the Federal Law “On Veterinary Medicine,” although we have already discussed approaches to solving the accumulated problems and technological solutions that are planned to be consolidated in these acts. In particular, when a new edition of the veterinary certification rules was being prepared, which ended with the adoption of their new version, which disappointed many of you and caused a feeling of dissatisfaction among us.

For this purpose, a working group was created under the leadership of Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation A.V. Petrikov.

In order to timely take into account possible comments of the professional (veterinary) community, participants in the production and circulation of products of animal origin and animals, following the already established tradition, we will publish on this website working versions of regulatory documents in the process of working on them. We will be looking forward to your feedback and suggestions.

In order to make it easier for you to navigate the logic of what we are trying to do, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that all the documents, the drafts of which we invite you to familiarize yourself with, form a single package. That they are interconnected and only the entire package (and not a separate document included in it) can solve the problems that we talked about solving earlier. Accordingly, the meaning of these regulations becomes clear only if they are considered together.

What is included in this package?

First of all, it includes themselves Veterinary certification rules with additions and changes.

Rules for ensuring the identification and traceability of animals and products of animal origin.

From July 1, 2018, all enterprises involved in the circulation of goods of animal origin are required to issue electronic certificates in the FSIS "Mercury". What is “Mercury” and how to operate retail and catering in the new realities, read our article.

According to the Federal Law of July 1, 2015 No. 243 “On Amendments to the Law of the Russian Federation “On Veterinary Medicine”, from July 1, 2018, cargoes controlled by the State Veterinary Supervision Authority are subject to mandatory electronic certification in the GIS “Mercury”.

Note: clause 5. FZ-243: Requirements of Articles 2.1 - 2.6 of the Law of the Russian Federation of May 14, 1993 N 4979-1 “On Veterinary Medicine” (as amended by this Federal Law) regarding the implementation of the rights and obligations of officials of the veterinary service and other specialists in the field of veterinary medicine, physical persons and legal entities, individual entrepreneurs when carrying out activities for the extraction (catch) of aquatic biological resources, processing, storage and sale of catches of aquatic biological resources and products made from them are applied after approval by the federal executive body in the field of legal regulation in veterinary medicine acts regulating the creation of mechanisms for monitoring the veterinary safety of regions of the Russian Federation and areas of production (catch) of aquatic biological resources, the use of risk profiles for conducting mandatory studies of products of animal origin, including catches of aquatic biological resources and products made from them, the formation of an exhaustive list of grounds to conduct laboratory studies of products of animal origin, including catches of aquatic biological resources and products made from them, but not earlier than January 1, 2016.

What is Mercury for?

The innovation was created to track the movement of goods across Russia, obtain a unified database of products or goods, and keep automatic records of the volume of products at the enterprise.

If previously veterinary certificates were stored in paper form, they will now be replaced by electronic ones. This will reduce the time for creating and processing veterinary documentation and will lead to increased biological and food safety of products.

In FSIS "Mercury" you can track the routes of movement of supervised cargo. Thus, eliminate the possibility of smuggling and counterfeiting of products.

Fines for non-use of FSIS Mercury

If a vehicle with cargo is stopped by control, the forwarder must show the UUID (unique identifier) or QR code of specific veterinary accompanying documents.

Without veterinary accompanying documents you will be fined. According to Art. 10.8 of the Administrative Code, the fine will be from 3,000 rubles if it is issued to the driver as an official, or from 10,000 to 20,000 rubles - to a legal entity. In the latter case, the punishment may also be suspension of activities for up to 90 days.

If your enterprise is in any way connected with food products of animal origin, which are controlled by the State Veterinary Supervision Authority - from raw materials to the finished product in a store or restaurant - get ready to work in the system.

From July 1, 2018, the following must connect to FSIS “Mercury”: livestock farms, meat plants, poultry enterprises, seafood producers, catering establishments, dairies, carriers of controlled products, wholesale depots and retail stores.

The system will be used by individual entrepreneurs, legal entities and individuals whose activities are related to any stage of product turnover. Veterinarians who serve enterprises will also register in the system.

Work of retail and catering in new conditions

At the end of December, the deadline for the mandatory use of Mercury was postponed until July 1, 2018 (a bill dated December 26, 2017, adopted by the State Duma in the third reading). But this does not mean that you can not register and not work in the system. It is recommended to already use Mercury.

What will change at work?

At the time of delivery and acceptance of products to a store or cafe, responsible employees must register veterinary accompanying documents (VSD) for the transport batch in the Mercury system. If you accept the goods partially, please indicate the discrepancies.

IMPORTANT! If you have received cargo and it is not in the Mercury system, then you cannot accept the goods.

If you are engaged in processing products, then you need to add processed products to the system and subsequently write them off. You can track the entire chain of work in Mercury.

If you transport processed products, create a transaction in the system. To do this, add all the data about the vehicle, the sending company and the recipient company, information about the waybill.

Working with FSIS Mercury in the enterprise accounting system

Today there are two effective ways to work with FSIS "Mercury": the program and. These solutions will allow you to confirm sales and purchases of animal products in your accounting system without additional downloads and manual entry of certificates.

Pictures with integration options

The company "ASP Electronic Services" automates work with FSIS "Mercury". Specialists register on the FSIS “Mercury” portal, teach how to use the system and set up integration with 1C.

Please note that to work with FSIS "Mercury" you need the Internet and Additionally, we recommend purchasing a QR code to read, which will help speed up the process of identifying veterinary certificates.

The ministry immediately denied this information, saying that this measure would not take effect until two years later. And the president immediately called not to raise milk prices. However, these statements did not reassure everyone - 2018 is just around the corner. In any case, the new measures will lead to costs for producers and higher milk prices, experts warn.

Why the fuss

All the noise started because of an order from the Ministry of Agriculture, which participants in the dairy market accidentally found in the Garant database. After information about additional documentation from March 1 was distributed in the media, the Ministry of Agriculture clarified that according to Order N648 of December 18, 2015, registration of veterinary accompanying documents (VSD) for certain types of products, including packaged milk, is not required until 2018 of the year.

At the same time, the ministry noted that mandatory electronic veterinary certification of finished products, including milk, will be introduced only from January 1, 2018. Until this time, electronic veterinary certification can be carried out by companies at will.

Let us recall that on Wednesday it became known that the National Union of Milk Producers (Soyuzmoloko) appealed to the federal authorities with a request to revoke the order of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, which obliges producers of drinking packaged milk from March 1, 2016 to draw up veterinary accompanying documents (VSD) for each party. The union noted that the Russian dairy market is not ready for such steps; mandatory registration of VSD could lead to the shutdown of many production facilities, as a result of which milk prices could rise significantly.

Putin's lightning-fast reaction

The dairy topic immediately attracted attention, and even the president responded to this message. At a meeting with the head of the Ministry of Agriculture, Alexander Tkachev, Vladimir Putin made it clear that an increase in milk prices is undesirable.

“It is important that all these innovations are minimally bureaucratic and do not create an additional significant burden for commodity producers, which will ultimately inevitably affect the price of the product,” said the head of state.

The head of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, in turn, noted that Russia is adopting foreign experience. Now there is a lot of “falsification, counterfeiting, and smuggling” on the Russian market; in order to understand the place of origin and movement of goods, electronic certification is being introduced. Those who oppose it simply want to “cash in on this,” noted Alexander Tkachev.

The same idea was voiced by the head of the State Duma Committee on Agrarian Issues Nikolai Pankov, saying that dairy producers who oppose electronic certification simply do not want to make the production scheme transparent and open.

There will be no costs

It is worth noting that electronic certification is already in effect for milk producers. Now the Ministry of Agriculture wants to transfer this experience to milk processors. Managing partner of the company 2K JSC Tamara Kasyanova told what exactly the ministry is trying to do.

– Now milk sellers already receive veterinary certificates – this is a mandatory procedure for them. From March 1, they must receive them electronically. Manufacturers of finished products, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, must collect this data in their database when purchasing milk, draw up a generalized document and send it as a request for their certificate. That is, one batch of milk may have several suppliers who will provide all the necessary veterinary certificates in electronic form. The task of the buyer (manufacturer of finished products) is to collect all this data and send a request to receive his own veterinary certificate,” the expert explained.

According to her, if the veterinary certification system works electronically, as planned, then milk producers should not incur any special additional costs.

Involving additional labor resources in processing applications for certificates will not be large-scale if all data, including veterinary certificates directly from the dairy farmers themselves, from whom milk is purchased, will be received electronically, she explained.

This will not require financial costs, the expert is sure.

If the process of obtaining a veterinary certificate is fully automated and obtaining the document is free, it will not be costly for dairy farmers. Only funds will be needed for the development and implementation of an electronic certification system,” noted Tamara Kasyanova.

Prices will increase by 5-10%

The National Union of Milk Producers, where this whole story began, does not abandon their previous statements.

As Maria Zhebit, director of the Soyuzmoloko public relations department, told us, “neither small nor large factories are ready to issue veterinary certificates.” The mandatory introduction of VSD will inevitably lead to an increase in production costs and will ultimately affect selling and consumer prices. And it doesn’t matter what kind of certification we are talking about - electronic or non-electronic.

Many processors will have to hire a special person, and large ones will have to hire several dozen employees, to handle the processing of these certificates. According to estimates from various factories and companies, this can increase production costs by 1-1.5%, and sometimes even higher. For example, there are calculations for a plant with a processing capacity of 200 tons per day. It will cost him almost 10 million rubles a year to introduce electronic certification, which will increase production costs by 5%, the expert said.

If veterinary certification is carried out for processors “the old fashioned way,” more than 25 thousand people will be needed, because each large processor will have to issue more than 6 million certificates annually. This will cost a large processor 8 billion rubles, which will increase the cost by about 7%. The costs of the entire dairy industry in connection with veterinary certification on paper can be estimated at 30 billion rubles. This applies to veterinary certification for all finished products,” added the director of the public relations department.

The fine for violations, according to Soyuzmoloko, will be up to 1 million rubles for each case. All these measures will ultimately lead, according to the union, to an increase in milk prices from 5 to 10%. But there are also “harsher assessments,” the expert added. According to Maria Zhebit, “all this contradicts international practice; in the countries of the Customs Union there is also no VSD for finished products.” At the same time, according to Soyuzmoloko, no discussion was held with the business community.

We believe that when it comes to such serious documents, it is necessary to meet with businesses and request calculations in order to assess the impact on the sector and on the wallets of citizens. Orders of this kind are not accepted so hastily,” the union representative noted.

Despite official statements that there is no problem, some Russian milk producers have already encountered difficulties due to veterinary accompanying documents. There were cases when retail chains refused to accept goods without complying with the VSD order.

Several large producers have already received notifications from retail chains that the acceptance of products has been suspended and milk will no longer be supplied without veterinary accompanying documents, said Maria Zhebit.

There will still be growth

According to the representative of the distribution company, development director of Volgograd Dairy Products LLC Nikolai Lukyanenko, the panic that has gripped milk producers today is somewhat premature.

This is the second day I’ve been talking with dairy industry specialists, everyone notes two points. The changes come into force on January 1, 2018. Until then, the submission of additional documents is voluntary and can be done electronically. The second point is that responsibility for the execution of the order is not spelled out either in it itself or in the acts to which it refers, he noted.

However, the distributor admits that all these measures will affect prices, and provides some figures for the Volgograd region.

At each enterprise that is not even engaged in production, but in the sale of the finished product, it will be necessary to create a department of two or three people who will only deal with the preparation of veterinary certificates. Each batch of goods of any size, starting from one pack, will need to have such a certificate. The conditional distributor issues 150-200 invoices per day. Accordingly, 150-200 certificates will be added to them. For enterprises in the Volgograd region, each certificate costs 54 rubles if the product is sold within the region, and 123 if outside. It is still difficult for the partners to estimate the total costs, a company representative said.

In general, according to Nikolai Lukyanenko, the initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture to introduce veterinary control for the finished product is not entirely clear.

Control functions in this area are already successfully carried out by Rospotrebnadzor. The initiative will lead to nothing but an increase in the price of the product for the end consumer,” the distributor concluded.