The quality and safety through organic foods supply chain in Bulgaria

Summary

The organic food market in Bulgaria is newly emerging and is comparatively small. The share of realized Bulgarian organic produce in the country is below 5 %. The purpose of this article is to determine the effect of the structure, management and functioning of food supply chain upon the quality and safety of organic food regarding consumer demand. The scientific research was based on Delphi’s enquiry method and 26 Bulgarian experts were interviewed.
The results show that the nature and character of organic food production is one of the most secure and sustainable agricultural productions, which determines the high quality and safety of the final produce. According to experts, food safety in addition to taste and nutritional value is the most important quality criteria for organic products.
The main objectives of the current GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) and HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point systems) are to ensure product safety and compliance with the visual size and labelling specifications and to maintain traceability. However, they are thought to be less well developed and implemented in organic food supply chains, and are almost never used in short local (e.g. direct sales or farm shop) supply chains and regional (e.g. farmers market) supply chains, that are popular in Bulgaria.
The systems of quality assurance and management (ISO 9000, etc.) may be successfully adopted for organic foods as well by adapting them to their production and processing specifics and to the characteristics of the chain of supply.