Development of world food standardization exemplified by standard for porcine meat in carcasses and commercial cuts

Abstract

The ongoing globalization of food trade including meat trade, facilitated by global access to the internet, has brought to light the usefulness of multilingual catalogues containing commercial offers and subject-targeted standards, which describe products available in the market. The speed of electronic communication makes it possible to purchase not only day by day, but, also, hour by hour, and, practically, to simultaneously place a purchase order and to transfer the agreed payment onto the account of a supplier. The existing world monetary system ensures the explicitness of both the currencies in use and the conversion factors determining their most recent exchange rate; however, to assure the honesty of transactions, there are necessary instruments that allow the determination of the subjects of transactions and their specificity along with the quality values at the same time. In particular, this refers to perishable products, which, first of all, cover non-processed agricultural products and food. Within the frame of standardization activities by the UN Organization, the Economic Commission for Europe has made an attempt to develop quality standards for perishable products and the Working Party on Agricultural Quality Products has been set up. The activities of this international institution were represented in the paper and exemplified by the standard of porcine meat in the form of carcasses and commercial cuts.