New legislation will cover whole food chain

Among the key elements in an 80-point, three-year hugely disparate legislative programme proposed in the Commission white paper is the establishment of a Europe-wide standards of control of food safety.

The Commission reports "wide variations" in the way Community legislation is implemented and inspections are carried out by national agencies. These inspections are to remain, but will be controlled under a common EU framework.

The framework will cover the whole of the food chain, including animal feed, and will move to attribute clear responsibility for safe food production to industry, producers and suppliers. Trace-ability of products from the farm to the table will be a key element in a series of new labelling and control regulations.

"One of the weakest links in the system," the paper argues, "is the lack of a clear commitment from all interested parties to give an early warning about a potential risk so that the necessary scientific evaluation and protective measures can be triggered early enough to ensure a proactive rather than reactive response at EU level."

Some of the legislation, such as the Commission's long-standing, but yet unsuccessful, attempt to get a Europe-wide ban on specified risk material in beef, is already in the pipeline, and the Commission is confident that many could be in place by the end of next year when the new European Food Authority is established.

The action plan's 18 priorities include the establishment of a rapid alert system; the establishment of the authority; a general food law directive establishing basic principles covering food legislation from producer liability to trace-ability and effective controls; new rules harmonising procedures at Community borders and mutual assistance; new animal feed regulations setting out minimum standards similar to those for foods; a centralised system for authorising so-called "novel foods" involving GMOs; new hygiene regulations and rules on residue testing; GMO labelling rules; updated rules of the use of food additives and flavourings.

The huge programme of measures calls for a radical overhaul of animal feed production standards, including the registering of compound-feed manufacturers. And it proposes to tighten regulations on foods and their ingredients which may be treated with ionising radiation.

New measures are proposed to cover-food for diabetics and processed baby foods as well as limits on the minerals that bottled water can contain.

Labelling rules will specify the sorts of claim producers may make, while other regulations will set pesticide residue limits for food and limits on toxic pollutants such as PCBs and dioxins.

The Commission also hopes to introduce conditions for environmental assessments ahead of approval of new GMO seed varieties, and proposes to reinforce the participation of the EU in the elaboration of international food standards.