Byrne warns funds may be withheld for food breaches

The European Commission will consider whether it should have the power to withhold EU funding from member-states if they are in breach of food safety laws, the Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, Mr David Byrne, told journalists yesterday.

Mr Byrne was launching his White Paper on food safety, following approval by the Commission.

The paper contains a three-year action plan involving 80 legislative measures and outline plans for an independent, advisory European Food Authority (EFA) to provide scientific risk assessment to the Commission.

The paper proposes to bring all national food control systems under a common EU framework policed by the Dublin-based Food and Veterinary Office.

The Commission also announced yesterday that a number of new food responsibilities will be devolved to Mr Byrne's directorate, notably from Enterprise in relation to food processing and general food law, and from Environment for the food aspects of GMOs, specifically labelling.

The Environment Commissioner, Ms Margot Wallstrom, retains responsibility for the environmental dimension of GMO approvals, notably of new seed varieties.

"The shopping trolley is one of the most potent weapons on the face of the earth," Mr Byrne told journalists, pointing to the evidence provided by recent food scares of the decisive effect of consumers' choices on farmers and producers. Europe had one of the best food industries in the world, but it also had the best-informed consumers, he said, and their confidence in the authorities had been seriously eroded.

The challenge was to restore that confidence as a matter of priority.

The radical idea of enforcing Community decisions through withholding funds to memberstates is mentioned almost in passing in the paper, but Mr Byrne yesterday singled it out as a means of speeding up the process of forcing member-state compliance.

Currently, as Britain is discovering over beef, court action may take several years and financial penalties on member-states arise only after a second court order is obtained for non-implementation of the first.

A confident Mr Byrne was responding at length to detailed questions from a packed press room which focused largely on his decision not to give the new EFA regulatory powers.

He said he was "passionate" in his conviction that division of responsibilities between scientists, as advisers, and legislators, responsible for determining follow-up action, was not only sensible but democratic. The European Parliament, he said, had only recently in the Amsterdam Treaty been given new powers of co-decision on legislation and it would be retrograde to take these away and give them to an unaccountable authority.

To do so would in any case have required treaty changes, he said.

He insisted it would become politically impossible for a Commission to defy the advice it was receiving from such a new authority.

The US model of the Food and Drug Administration, which does have regulatory powers, was suited to the US situation, he said.

The paper is premised on the unwillingness of member-states to see their national food safety bodies undermined. Asked if it would not have been better to try to give the EFA the power to arbitrate on scientific disputes between member-states, Mr Byrne said it would gain a "moral authority" over time. It would build confidence both through demonstrating its scientific expertise and through common work and networking with national agencies.

Responding to questions about funding, Mr Byrne acknowledged that he did not at this stage know how much the EFA would cost but insisted it would be entirely publicly funded.