Positions of Food Business Operators in Bosnia and Herzegovina toward HACCP System

New approach in food safety and hygiene legislation gives the central role to HACCP for all food business operators, with an exception of primary production. Slowly ongoing transposition of the EU food safety legislation into regulatory framework of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B H) also puts HACCP as an obligatory system for food operators. However, the implementation of HACCP is still on relatively low level, with some misunderstandings. The reasons are commonly found in lack of quality plans for implementation and control of implementation of the adopted regulation. As far there was not any systematic research of food operators approaches and positions toward HACCP as obligatory and, according to some researches, costly system. The aim of the study was to find familiarity of B H food business operators with impact of new regulatory framework on their business. The research was done by survey method in 18 companies. the surveyed operators, depending on their profile, had highly different opinions regarding costs pertaining to HACCP, administrative burden of HACCP implementation, and overall aims and benefits of its implementation. The results of the study pointed out necessity of further training and education of food business operators in B H regarding food hygiene legislation and its purposes.