Imported food control in Bhutan National situation report – March 2019

Like many small and developing nation, Bhutan imports large proportion of its food supplies. In order for Bhutan to develop an effective imported food control system, the country situation analysis has been conducted to capture accurately the existing national imported food control situation in Bhutan. The key findings included: 1) Bhutan does not implement systematic and science-based import inspection and certification currently, except for few selected food commodities presenting high biosecurity risk; 2) key legislations and other important guidelines, permits, certificates, SOPs related to imported food control have been developed, but are yet to be implemented fully; 3) infrastructure at official border points needs to be strengthened to implement imported food control system effectively; 4) staff needs to be trained to implement import inspection and certification; and 5) an integrated database on food quality and safety surveillance, and import and export inspection and certification need to be developed to generate data for risk assessment and risk categorization. Detailed findings and priority recommended actions plans are documented in this report to strengthen imported food control in Bhutan taking the One Health approach.