In accordance with the Law of “Forensic Expertise” forensic expertise — is a research by an expert on the basis of special knowledge of material objects, phenomena and processes that contain information about the circumstances of a case that is conducted by the inquiries bodies, preliminary inquiry or court bodies.
When investigating and reviewing criminal cases in courts in accordance with the Code of Criminal Procedure of Ukraine (CPC of Ukraine) there is often a need for special information in the field of commodity science. The information of such kind is obtained during conducting forensic expertise.
Research on food products is relatively new area of activity of the experts of Kyiv Research Institute of Forensic Expertise, but its relevance is not questioned, since the given expertise is the main means of improving of the quality of goods and preventing the supply of counterfeit goods to the trade enterprises, improving their range.
As a rule research is conducted on materials of criminal cases that are of public interest.
The essence of forensic commodity expertise is to establish the actual commodity properties through special research. Mostly, commodity experts are involved in the following:
- determine the belonging of goods to the classification categories that are adopted in the production and trade sphere (type, grade, article, brand, model, size, complete units, etc);
- establish the way of production of consumable goods (commercial or handicraft industry), manufacturing enterprise, country of manufacture;
- determine the conformity of packing an transportation, conditions and terms of storage of market products to the requirements of the existing regulations;
- determine the reasons of qualitative changes in marketable products (have they a production nature during transportation, storage, under the operational process);
- determine the quantitative indicators of the goods (weight, size, volume, dimensions etc.), its completeness, compliance with the requirements of standards, technical conditions and delivery conditions;
- investigate the quality of the components of the product, the establishment of their content in percent, the determination materials and raw materials;
- determine the price of the goods;
- investigate the quality of goods, identified defects, change in quality, definition of grade, suitability for sale (for sale or processing), the establishment inconsistencies in the quality of goods with the terms of the contract etc.
In general, experts in commodity research of Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise note that it is impossible to speak about the quality of any product, product on the market in general. It is possible to discuss only a specific batch of a certain manufacturer. At the same time even different batches may have certain differences.
