Investigative show "Vetting" – News24
Who is responsible for what we eat?
One of the institutions responsible for food in Albania is the Institute of Food Safety and Veterinary Medicine, which also carries out mycotoxin analysis. Thus, this institution, born from a decision of the Council of Ministers in 2006 “On the restructuring of research and scientific institutes, under the Ministry of Agriculture”, is considered a national reference laboratory. This national laboratory has the function of monitoring various viral diseases, diagnosing them, producing veterinary biopreparations, controlling the microbiological part of food products and by-products of animal origin, whether produced locally or imported, and controlling residues of substances.
However, the Supreme State Audit Office conducted an audit of this institution in 2024, regarding financial statements and compliance. The audit team had identified 22 findings, 16 of which are organizational measures and 4 measures to eliminate the negative effects found in the administration of public funds and to manage public funds economically, efficiently and effectively.
According to them, in terms of financial management and control, ISUV has not drafted a strategic plan and action plans, has not established a Strategic Management Group which should meet four times a year and has no internal regulations. It was also found that there is no risk management strategy and has not drafted a risk register at the institutional or directorate level.
Another problem lies with the laboratories available to this institution. ISUV has a total of 41 laboratories, including 3 laboratories for internal services. Out of 38 functional laboratories, only 19 have accredited tests, while about 50% of the laboratories are unaccredited.
Of the 1,909 accredited analyses in total, 93.1% are concentrated in the Department of Plant Protection, while key departments such as Microbiology and Water Monitoring, Waste Monitoring and Animal Health have minimal percentages, ranging from 1 to 5 percent. The veterinary medicine sector and the plant pest diagnostics sector do not have any accredited tests.
"There are no formalized mechanisms that essentially involve collaboration between clinicians or institutions that control food safety or institutions that deal with public health policies. There is nothing formalized that signals epidemiological phenomena or addresses them systematically. There are none," says Klejdia Mati, an oncologist.
ISUV has been supplied with kits worth almost 20 million lek for the period 2022–2024. The supplies were immediately distributed to laboratories without staying in the central warehouse. Their use was not documented with approved procedures, there was no system for monitoring expiration dates and a warning system on the verge of expiration, while administration was done manually.
Laboratory waste was not recorded in special registers and was not stored in dedicated facilities. The central warehouse did not meet the technical conditions for cold chain storage.
Likewise, the audit of the Supreme State Audit Office has found violations in the drafting of technical specifications, lack of technical argumentation, failure to involve field specialists, unjustified division into lots, establishment of unsubstantiated criteria, and failure to fully verify documentation during the implementation of contracts.
In some cases, calibration certificates were not administered, authorized service staff were not verified, and important data such as the origin and expiration date of goods were not documented.
Regarding the analyzes performed abroad, for the period 2022–2024, about 1,880,000 euros were spent, or about 627,000 euros/year on average, for the “C. Group” laboratory in Belgium. The inclusion of VAT at a value of almost 21% in the invoices has brought an additional cost of approximately 298 thousand euros or otherwise almost 33 million lekë. This has been considered by the KLSH as an uneconomical use of funds. Similarly, the process of selecting foreign laboratories was carried out without the relevant order of the minister and without a proper comparative study.
"So I haven't seen that priority, food safety, that is. The responsible institutions, the Ministry of Agriculture, food, other institutions, it seems to me that they are only in a passive position. That is, the problem occurs and they are forced to identify or pre-announce, but not to be the vanguard or solve the problems. This is my opinion, perhaps", further expresses the professor at the FSNH, Dritan Topi.
Meanwhile, on October 3, 2025, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Andis Salla, visited the ISUV premises, where, according to them, the laboratories have been reaccredited and the analytical capacities of the institute have been expanded according to international standards and number around 1900 certified tests.
However, several tenders that were announced in the same time period of October 2025 by the Food Safety and Veterinary Institute have resulted in a red flag for lack of competition and disqualification of the lowest bid, according to openprocurement.al.
These four tenders are related to either servicing-calibration of laboratory equipment for advanced analysis or purchasing materials or reagents. The amount of these tenders started from 432 thousand new lek up to almost 27 million new lek.
The tender for the “purchase of reagents” was announced on October 1, 2025 and the winner was announced 30 days later. While six companies competed, this tender was awarded to “KRIJON” sh.pk, owned by Piro Zoga. The latter is known to be involved in the affair of obtaining fictitious tenders of the Agricultural University of Tirana and is accused by SPAK of committing the criminal offense of “Forgery of documents”.
We recall that UBT staff members have prepared false project data, in collaboration with "Krijon" sh.pk, and two other companies. They have benefited from nine procurement procedures conducted in 2022, with a limit fund value of 90 million new lek.
"This transformation is the result of the professionalism of human resources, sustainable investments in laboratory capacities and the support of our development policies. We ensure quality for the consumer, trust for the farmer and reliability for Albanian products in international markets", said the Minister of Agriculture, Andis Salla, in October 2025.
