On April 3, 2015 the Government of Georgia adopted a technical regulation in the dairy sector in order to define major principles for the production, processing, and distribution of dairy products. Later in 2017, the regulation was amended and the law now strictly regulates the labelling of dairy products and particularly the use of terms such as “cheese” and “butter”.

On December 17, Salome Gelashvili, the Deputy Head of the APRC, presented a policy paper entitled “Challenges of Executing Technical Regulation of Dairy Products” to representatives of the dairy sector. The meeting was organized in the framework of the Supporting Food and Agriculture Business Support Organizations in DCFTA and SME Policy Implementation project.

On December 10-11, ISET’s APRC team organized a comprehensive stakeholder dialogue to discuss the interim results of the RIA on draft Law on Windbreaks. The two-day workshop gathered representatives of the Agrarian Committee of the Parliament of Georgia, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture, municipalities, the private sector (principally in the form of farmers), international donors (IFAD, GIZ), and various NGOs.

On December 6-7, ISET’s Pati Mamardashvili traveled to the UK to hold a presentation at the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences at Newcastle University.

On Thursday, December 6, the Deputy Head of the Agricultural Policy Research Center (APRC) Irakli [Rati] Kochlamazashvili, presented the ‘Georgia’s Beef Market Review’ at the kick-off workshop of the USDA funded Georgia Food for Progress (GFP) project on Livestock Sector Development in Georgia.