SELECTED QUALITY SIGNS OF FOOD PRODUCTS IN POLAND, LEGAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS

Abstract

The aim of the study was to identify whether and to what extent the selected quality signs guarantee food safety understood in a broader sense as a food quality and whether the legal requirements governing their functioning aff ect their use by food producers. Detailed analysis concern the selected signs encountered in the Polish food market: “Poznaj Dobrą Żywność” (Try Fine Food), “Jakość Tradycja” (Quality Tradition), “Lista Produktów Tradycyjnych” (Traditional Products List) and Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) and Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG). Considerable attention was paid to their legal requirements related to ensuring food safety, because, as a factor in the economic environment, they strongly infl uence the activity of entities in agribusiness. For the study dogmatic method and documentary method for the secondary data collection were used. Results were elaborated and shown by the descriptive method and graphic techniques. The least of all the quality signs in Poland are those legally protected by the EU (9 PDO, 19 PGI, 9 TSG), which is undoubtedly linked with high EU requirements of their use for producers. Among all of the analysed signs, the most popular is the Polish “Traditional Products List” (1347 registered products till the end of 2014), probably due to the lack of any institutional verifi cation ex ante and ex post of statutory requirements fulfi lment regarding the quality of the products to be put on the List. Considerations can be the basis for further research, especially in terms of proposing the creation of legal and economic instruments or improvements to existing ones in terms of helping producers to meet the high legal requirements of the discussed quality signs.

Keywords

• food safety
• food quality
• quality signs