In modern economies, the food control system directly determines competitiveness in export markets, public health costs, and consumer trust in domestic brands and institutions.
Any failure within this system is not paid for only through medical bills, but also through product recalls, the loss of export licences, and the erosion of retail margins, which are already under constant pressure from large retail chains.
In 2009, by adopting the Law on Food Safety, Serbia established the Directorate for National Reference Laboratories (DNRL) as a specialised body within the Ministry of Agriculture. A decade later, in December 2019, the National Food Safety Laboratory was officially accredited, following an investment of around 20 million euros, of which the EU donated eight million, while the remainder was provided by the Government of Serbia. This support for strengthening Serbia’s institutional capacity in the fields of public health and agriculture also reflects the strategic importance of this segment for negotiating Chapter 12, which concerns food safety.
When the system rests on three mutually unconnected pillars
The architecture of food control in Serbia rests on three pillars. The Ministry of Agriculture is the regulatory centre, the DNRL possesses the technical capacities, while the inspection services – veterinary, sanitary and phytosanitary – represent the operational arms of the system in the field. Each of these pillars functions with its own budgetary constraints, without an integrated system for data exchange.
Today the DNRL encompasses the Laboratory for Food Safety, Animal Feed and Milk Quality Testing, the phytosanitary laboratory and the plant gene bank. From a regulatory perspective, it has still not been aligned with EU standards, particularly in the segment of inspection oversight, sampling and coordination among bodies that share responsibilities. Between regulatory optimism and operational reality there is a gap that cannot be bridged by good intentions. Harmonisation at the level of legislation and harmonisation in practical implementation are two fundamentally different projects.
In its progress report on Serbia from November 2025, the European Commission noted that the country had made no progress in aligning the permitted levels of aflatoxins in milk with EU limits, despite years of warnings and the strategic importance of the issue for public health and exports. Although it had been planned that on 1 December 2025 the permitted level of aflatoxins would be reduced from 0.25 to 0.05 micrograms per kilogramme, the Government of Serbia extended the deadline last November 2025 by another year, to 1 December 2026.
Levels of aflatoxins five times higher than EU standards prolong health risks, especially for children. This is particularly concerning given that studies from the past five years indicate seasonal exceedances even of the current limit during drought years and in winter. Without strengthened inspections, systematic sampling and addressing the shortage of staff in the Veterinary Directorate – which the EU has explicitly identified as a key obstacle – the stated determination that Serbia should adapt to EU standards may remain merely a dead letter. On the one hand, Serbia will suffer economic consequences due to limited exports of animal products, while on the other it will face increased public health costs.
Serbia still does not meet the requirements for exporting fresh eggs, poultry and pork to the EU market. In December 2019, the then Minister of Agriculture Branislav Nedimović declared the accredited laboratory to be “the Serbian general headquarters for food safety”, noting that this finally closed the issue of laboratories after 20 years of waiting. The rhetoric was triumphant. The reality is somewhat more complex.
The Food Safety Laboratory within the DNRL conducts microbiological, chemical, molecular-biological, parasitological and immunoenzymatic testing. It also has the capacity to test for mycotoxins, including aflatoxins, for which samples previously had to be sent abroad. The accreditations it possesses mean that the laboratory can analyse whether a particular sample meets the required standards, but the question remains how many samples arrive, how frequently, from which segments of the supply chain and according to what sampling plan.
What we could have learned from our closest neighbours
Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia built their reference laboratories and integrated them into the EU network before accession. Serbia obtained an accredited laboratory only in 2019, a decade after the law that envisaged it had been adopted. These delays have a measurable cost: missed export potential and a slower development of regulatory reputation. The economic stakes are indeed high, given that the EU accounts for about 50 per cent of total Serbian agricultural exports. For that reason, laboratory capacities cannot be treated as an abstract state investment, but rather as infrastructure for export competitiveness. However, the laboratory alone, without reform of processing and inspection capacities, is not sufficient to unlock that potential.
Consumer trust is also not abstract, but a measurable economic quantity. In Serbia, it rests on uncertain foundations, not necessarily because the food is dangerous, but because citizens lack institutional tools to assess that risk. An empirical signal comes from the RASFF system, the EU’s rapid alert network for food and feed. Serbia regularly appears among third countries with a significant number of notifications concerning pesticides, aflatoxins and salmonella. Of all products returned at the border between 2008 and 2023, in as many as 60 per cent of cases the reason was excessive levels of aflatoxins and pesticides, and the presence of salmonella.
On the domestic front, the problem of non-transparency is even more pronounced, as it is impossible to find information about what has been withdrawn, who returned the goods and where they ended up, even though the law in force since 2009 prescribes the obligation of public availability of information concerning health risks. In practice this does not happen, which fuels suspicions that the authorities are thereby protecting certain interest groups at the expense of consumers. By contrast, the Croatian inspection authorities transparently publish withdrawn products along with the name of the producer and the reason for the withdrawal.
The cure costs more than the disease
Systemic failures rarely have a single culprit. In Serbia there are several. The operational budget, which determines how many analyses are conducted, how many inspectors are in the field and how quickly the system responds to new risks, has not adapted to the increased scope of tasks. Infrastructure without operational resources is a museum piece rather than a functional instrument of protection.
The staffing problem stems directly from the financial one. Experts in analytical chemistry and molecular biology are offered conditions in the private sector that the public administration cannot match, so knowledge flows out of regulatory institutions towards those who are supposed to be regulated. The business sector, particularly the part oriented towards the EU market, invests in knowledge and standards, while those who sell their goods on the local market lack the funds to do so, and there are no state incentives for them either. The result is a bifurcated system: one for the global market, and another, weaker one, for domestic consumers.
Inspection services must be strengthened in terms of staffing, which also implies competitive salaries. Alongside the central laboratory, a regional network of accredited laboratories is necessary, because the entire food chain cannot be covered from Belgrade alone. A public register of withdrawn products must become an operational norm, because informed consumers and civil oversight are the only pressure mechanisms that do not depend on political will.
The laboratory is only an instrument, and without an institutional ecosystem it will remain an expensive but unused potential. A chronic shortage of staff, the absence of an integrated control plan based on risk assessment, the misalignment of permitted contaminant levels with EU standards, insufficient coordination among competent authorities and the systemic lack of transparency towards consumers are not isolated shortcomings. They are symptoms of a model that has treated the regulatory function as a bureaucratic obligation related to EU integration rather than as an economic imperative in the service of citizens.
The economic consequences are measurable. Serbia cannot export certain categories of animal products to the EU market and faces an increased frequency of RASFF notifications, while these costs in the long term exceed the value of any savings made on inspection budgets. Food safety must become infrastructure for economic competitiveness, not a regulatory expense. Serbia has all the prerequisites to take that step. The only thing missing is the decision to begin – systematically rather than selectively.
(Radar, 12.03.2026)
https://radar.nova.rs/ekonomija/znamo-li-sta-jedemo-kontrola-hrane/