On 12 November, noi.md wrote that Moldova would get new rules for selling fish, so shoppers could see more easily where it came from. The piece cites Realitatea. The same day, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry announced that the government had approved, at that sitting, the regulation on specific traceability requirements for fishery and aquaculture products, drafted by the ministry.

The ministry says each lot must be uniquely identifiable, from catch or harvest through to retail, and carry minimum data: species, origin, date of catch or harvest, lot number, quantity, production method and how it is presented, the producer’s name and contact details. noi.md kept a shorter list: origin, species, quantity and the date.

The papers that travel with the lot are recorded and sent to the National Food Safety Agency. The agency can set the fishing log, the catch certificate, the landing or transhipment declarations, the sales notes and the takeover declarations against the labels in warehouses or processing plants. The regulation also requires the cold chain in transport and in storage.

The stated aim is to keep fish from illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing off the market, and to bring the law closer to the European Union’s official controls. In the text put before the sitting, the decision partly transposes EU fisheries control regulation 1224/2009. It covers imported products and aquaculture, including farms that use a recirculating system.

On the texts available now, the rules are not already in the shops. The draft decision on gov.md says the act takes effect when Law no. 82/2024 on official agri-food controls takes effect, and is repealed when the treaty of accession to the European Union is signed. The law’s final article sets its own start at 8 May 2028. In the sitting file, the decision number was still blank.

In the same draft, lots are made up before the first placing on the market. After the first sale they may be pooled or split only if the path back to the catch or the harvest can still be followed. The label also points to the quality rules in Government Decision no. 610/2023 and to article 39 of Law no. 288/2024.

The photograph shows the Central Market in Chișinău. The author is Guttorm Flatabø, and the image is on Wikimedia Commons under a CC BY 2.0 licence. It is not a fish counter, and it is not the cabinet sitting.

Source consulted: În Moldova vor fi introduse noi reguli de comercializare a peștelui: Ce se schimbă pentru cumpărători.