By averting the most serious risks to consumer health, the EU’s rapid alert system for food and feed (RASFF) helped ensure the safety of food last year in Europe, according to the annual report published by the Commission on Tuesday 25 September.
Of the 3,832 risk notifications, 942 were alerts of serious risks to health, giving rise to measures including recall, withdrawal and destruction of suspect products.
The type of risk mostly concerned salmonella in poultry meat as the most frequently reported issue in food checked at the EU border and mercury in swordfish in food checked on the EU market.
Also in 2017, a high number of notifications related to fipronil residues in eggs – a scandal that led the member states and European Commission to improve the fluidity of information in cases of fraud (see EUROPE 11870). In a press release, Health and Food Safety Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis said he would submit the report to European agriculture ministers in November. Quizzed on Monday about revelations by Foodwatch of the presence of beef gelatine in yogurt, his spokesman cited EU labelling legislation and said the Commission was closely monitoring reports of the legislation not being respected. The report can be found at: https://bit.ly/2pAiIld. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)