“The statistics show that the good work done for a long time for the purity of Finnish food has brought excellent results,” said Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Jari Leppä in a bulletin.
“In international comparison, it is not a self-evident fact that food is safe, but this requires expertise and additional work from our food producers as well as financial inputs, each and every day. Through Foodfacts we can tell about the high quality and purity of our food in international forums and benefit from the added value that such products definitely deserve. And, it is important to have this information in the English language as well.”
The Foodfacts website (https://www.luke.fi/ruokafakta/en/frontpage/) produced jointly by the Natural Resources Institute Finland Luke and Finnish Food Safety Authority Evira provides statistical data on the quality of Finnish food and food production in relation to statistical data collected from other, mainly European countries.
The world’s largest harvesting area for wild organic products
Foodfacts gives information on pesticide and antibiotic residues and production practices by food categories. The website is published in the Finnish, Swedish and English language, and it serves to support Finnish companies operating on the domestic and international food market to highlight the strengths of their products.
The many verifiable strengths of Finnish food production include the low use of antibiotics in the medication of farm animals and almost zero presence of salmonella.
In both of these Finland and Sweden constitute a category of their own in European statistical comparison. The good situation in terms of animal and plant diseases is something quite unique as well. The obvious advantage of the low incidence of plant diseases is that pesticides need to be used at much lower levels than in the large European food-producing countries.
The obvious advantage of the low incidence of plant diseases is that pesticides need to be used at much lower levels than in the large European food-producing countries.
The statistics also show that Finland has the world’s largest harvesting area for wild organic products, 11.6 million hectares, which represents 30 percent of the total area in the world where such products can be collected.