Tighter EU food safety laws vital, Byrne says

Radical reforms of European food legislation to restore consumer confidence in what they eat have been outlined by the EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, Mr David Byrne.

The reforms, to be contained in a white paper, will modernise EU legislation on food, improve the scientific advice system to respond rapidly and effectively to food scares, and "reinforce controls from farm to table", he said at a conference on food regulation held in Dublin by the legal firm Arthur Cox. Mr Byrne warned that economic growth, employment and competitiveness in the European agri-food industry were at stake. Moreover, the functioning of the single market had been called into question by successive crises, which had undermined the public's trust in "the capacity of the food industry, in the broadest sense, and in public authorities to ensure their food is safe".

He said: "The Commission is very serious when it says food safety is a top priority. We are not pandering to any particular lobby. We are not trying to curry favour from a European public which has grown increasingly sceptical about the benefits of European integration."

Food legislation lacked overall coherence and had to be updated. The recent dioxin scandal had exposed gaps such as "the limited possibility for the EU to safeguard measures to respond rapidly to an emergency situation in the food or feed chain".

There was an absence of "set, acceptable limits for the majority of environmental contaminants which may be present in food and feed".

The reforms would improve the "rapid-alert system", and its scope would be widened to include the whole food and feed chain. "We should be in a situation where we can trace, identify and recall contaminated foodstuffs quickly and efficiently."

Safety procedures in emergency situations needed to be improved as they were fragmented and incomplete, while existing hygiene provisions on agricultural and food production were too complex. "The intention is to bring them together in one comprehensive piece of legislation."

It was essential to accelerate the process of setting maximum residue limits for pesticides in food, he said. There was a need to consolidate public confidence in food science.

Senator Feargal Quinn, of Superquinn supermarket group, said consumers would call the shots on food safety. They had shifted from a position of almost absolute trust of food producers to an atmosphere where that was almost all gone. On GM foods, he said with the importance of Ireland's food industry, it could not let the EU decide on policy "for us". GM foods might prove vital to innovative food production, but equally could have unacceptable risks.

Dr Patrick Wall, chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, said consumers' confidence in the food they ate had dipped so much that people were seeking more reassurance that what they consumed was safe.

"For consumers, perceived risk is actual risk. The dioxin scandal in Belgium bears this out. Not one person became ill but £1.5 billion worth of damage was done to industry and the Belgian government was brought down."

The text of Mr Byrne's speech is on www.ireland.com/newspaper/special/1999/byrne