EU agriculture ministers and the European Commission expressed general satisfaction in Tallinn on Tuesday 5 September at the way the Commission and the countries involved had handled the scandal of eggs contaminated with the insecticide Fipronil.
Only German Minister Christian Schmidt was relatively critical, arguing that the European Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) should have worked better. Several MEPs have already made similar comments. The Slovak agriculture minister asked why notification came only at the end of July when fraudulent misuse of the insecticide had been detected in September 2016.
Some ministers, including those of France and Belgium, acknowledged that the way in which information circulates among national health agencies had to be improved.
Most of the ministers who spoke at the informal Agriculture Council meeting made the point that this was criminal fraud.
Reinforcing cooperation. The scandal has demonstrated the need to “reinforce European cooperation and ensure that communication channels are more fluid”, stated Belgian Federal Agriculture Minister Denis Ducarme arriving at the meeting. In Belgium, the pesticide Fipronil, employed to eradicate red lice, was used in 93 poultry farms. The minister said that it had been thanks to the Belgian self-monitoring system that “Fipronil was detected in the egg sector in Belgium”. “So, it is thanks to our system that the countries of Europe as a whole were alert to the problem”, he went on to say, highlighting that this was a case of fraud that was international in scale.
Health and Food Safety Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis updated ministers on the latest developments in the affair. He pointed out that the scandal was of European proportions, with hundreds of farms blocked for production, 26 member states, 2 EEA states and 19 third countries involved. “While the risk to human health is low, the consequences of this criminal activity have impacted greatly the consumer confidence”, he acknowledged. Hence there is a need, he said: - to obtain a complete picture of what happened; - collectively to provide clear answers to the citizens; - and to make sure that those who are involved in that kind of unlawful business are found and brought to justice. Andriukaitis said he had been given assurances that “that all suspected farms have been blocked and contaminated eggs and egg products are being destroyed”.
Still work to be done. Although he felt the RASFF had worked well, the Commissioner stressed that there is “still work to be done”. He said that the launch of an EU-wide monitoring exercise to investigate the possible use of illegal substances in egg-producing farms had been discussed with national experts and that fact-finding missions to the four worst affected member states (Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany) were scheduled for late September/early October. “The EU has always drawn lessons from so-called ‘food crises’” he stated. Thus, a high-level ministerial meeting will take place in Brussels on 26 September to discuss how to strengthen the way the EU networks deal with food safety and food fraud. Conclusions may then be drawn at the Agriculture Council in October. There needs to be discussion on how to improve cooperation and make communication channels “more fluid, more efficient”, the commissioner stated. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)