According to the Court of Auditors, the EU food safety model put in place by the 2002 European Regulation establishing the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is the best in the world at protecting consumers' health from chemical hazards in food, but it is too ambitious and its implementation is unsatisfactory, according to a report published by the institution on Tuesday 15 January.
A lack of resources, insufficient controls in the Member States and a lack of coordination between public and private controls are pointed out.
The report, the result of an audit carried out in 2016, is based on visits to only three Member States - Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia - and interviews with the Commission. It focuses on relevant sectoral regulation for chemical hazards, which cover contaminants, ingredients (food additives, enzymes, flavourings, nutrient sources), chemical residues and materials in contact with food.
According to the auditors, the legal framework governing chemicals in food, feed, plants and live animals remains a work in progress and has not yet reached the level of implementation envisaged. In addition, the EFSA is overstretched and suffers backlogs in its work on chemicals, which is detrimental to the sustainability of the model as a whole.
Third observation: sometimes the same substances are controlled by national public authorities and private laboratories, while other substances are not controlled at all.
"The EU food safety model is a good model, as all substances should be evaluated before being authorised or not. The problem is the control system", said Janusz Wojciechowski, head of audit, when presenting the report to the press.
Indeed, while controls are carried out for pesticide residues and veterinary medicines, they are generally not carried out for food flavourings, food additives and materials in contact with food, the auditors noted.
"8,000 substances are covered by legislation and should be controlled. National authorities don't have risk analysis. There should be synergy between public and private controls", Wojciechowski added, referring explicitly to "food industry laboratories”.
Rely more extensively on controls in private laboratories. The Court of Auditors recommends: - assessing potential change to the legislation governing chemical hazards in the light of the capacity to apply it consistently; - further encouraging complementarity so that Member State public authorities can rely more extensively on controls carried out by the private sector; - explaining what action it will take with regard to pesticide residues in food to maintain the same level of assurance for both EU produced and imported food - while respecting WTO rules.
In response to the press pointing out that it was politically unacceptable - given the public health stakes - to entrust controls to private laboratories, the head of audit said "of course there is a risk that controls carried out by private laboratories may not be objective, but they should be strictly controlled by the public administration".
"Lack of resources is a problem for the EFSA and for the Member States. We need to optimise resources”, added one auditor. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)