dairy products

Draft Decree of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Slovak Republic on certain milk products

The existing legislation laying down requirements concerning the characteristics of milk products is being clarified. The definitions are being amended of certain terms that are overcomplicated and difficult to interpret in the current legislation and need to be simplified for practical use. In particular, the definition of cheese and the definition of a cheese product are being amended. New terms that have long been used in practice but were absent from the legislation are now being defined, such as probiotic culture, whey cheese, mould-ripened cheese, and stretch-curd cheese, including the requirements for these products and their labelling. The draft Decree removes the currently defined terms ‘modified milk’, ‘modified liquid milk product’, and ‘alternative culture yoghurt’, as these terms are no longer used in practice and no longer need to be defined.

The draft legislation contains requirements for dairy products in general, for goat’s milk, drinking milk and cream, fermented milk products, raw materials, and other ingredients used to produce fermented milk products, natural cheeses, whey cheeses, cheese products, processed cheeses and processed cheese products, as well as requirements for the labelling of these products.
The Annex contains tables classifying cheeses, cream, fermented milk, and yoghurt, and lays down limits for the number of colony-forming units (CFU) in fermented milk products labelled with the words ‘contains live microflora’. It also lays down requirements for the labelling of natural cheeses and curd cheese based on the water content of the non-fatty dry matter or the fat content of the dry matter.
The transitional provisions allow sufficient time for the affected operators on the market to finish using packaging labelled in accordance with the currently applicable legislation and stipulate the latest date by which products manufactured and labelled before the effective date of this Decree may be placed on the market.