EP’s horticulture team hosted an enlightening awareness workshop on food safety standards for competitive marketing for sector stakeholders. The workshop was held on May 17, 2019, at Sapphire Addis Hotel and was attended by fruit & vegetable processors, government regulatory bodies with mandates in the food processing, private service providers in the food processing industry, researchers and academic institutions and other industry actors operating in the industry. In his opening remarks Ato Tilaye Bekele, Senior Intervention Manager (Horticulture Sector), welcomed the participants and highlighted the objective of the workshop. Ato Tilaye further shared his insight on food quality standards in the country and the outcome of the seminar to the participants.

The expert, Marijke Elshof, who has over 15 years of hands-on experience in the EU market quality standards requirements and evolution delivered a lecture on the event. Speaking during the workshop, Marijke described international market quality standards based on EU-Market and held discussions with the participants on the selection criteria of QM standards. The workshop provided a good opportunity for knowledge sharing. Furthermore, The lecture with question and answer session played a key role in creating awareness on the concept and is expected to add value to the participants. At the end of the workshop, participants have agreed to undertake a wider discussion in upcoming events.