The National Commission for Regulatory Improvement (Conamer) put a proposal for a regulation on cheese in Mexico for public consultation.
On August 26, 2021, Conamer published a draft of the Conformity Assessment Procedure (CAP) for the national standard NOM-223-SCFI/SAGARPA-2018, Cheese.
Upon completion, the cheese CAP will provide the procedure to determine if cheese products meet Mexican national standards.
Public comments can be made until October 25, 2021.
Volume of cheese production in Mexico (tons)
Until now, the Mexican cheese sector has shown significant dynamism.
Indeed, in 2013 the total production volume amounted to 307,784 tons and by 2019 it stood at 424,117 tons, according to the information reported by the Economic Information Bank (BIE) of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi).
Thus, the growth indicated is equivalent to a rate of the order of 5.5% per year.
Regulation on cheese
Production value in Mexico by type of cheese (thousands of pesos)
The Procedure for the Evaluation of Conformity (PEC) aims to establish the process and requirements that producers or managers of the product must meet, to demonstrate compliance with the products called cheese and their different names in accordance with the Official Mexican Standard NOM -223-SCFI / SAGARPA-2018, Cheese – Denomination, specifications, commercial information and test methods, published on January 31, 2019 in the Official Gazette of the Federation.
In addition, it is applicable to all cheeses and their different names that are marketed in the territory of the United Mexican States, of national or foreign manufacture.
The main objective is to provide certainty about the procedure that producers or product managers must follow to carry out the conformity assessment of their products prior to their commercialization in national territory, the way in which compliance with the NOM from which the current regulatory proposal derives.
That is to say, the form, mechanisms, requirements, specifications, sampling and other considerations that, on the one hand, must comply with the obligated subjects, and on the other, those evaluated by accredited and approved persons to assess conformity.
NOM
The powers of those who must carry out surveillance are also established.
All of this, as a whole, will also meet the objectives set out in the NOM and in its Second Transitory Agreement that establishes the obligation to initiate the work of preparing a Procedure for the Evaluation of Conformity for that specific NOM.
Derived from this main objective, the regulatory proposal seeks to mitigate the problem, which is related to market failures such as information asymmetries and its consequent problem of adverse selection, inequitable competition and an underdeveloped market, among others.
