Brussels, 27/03/2001 (Agence Europe) - In a resolution adopted in Libreville (Gabon), the ACP/EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly calls for the degree of food safety demanded for European consumers to be the same for foodstuffs and animal feed that the Union exports towards ACP countries. ACP and European parliamentarians are concerned about the fact that the African continent receives bone and meal flour from Europe for the farming of fish, poultry and pigs, and constitutes a traditional outlet for the surplus production of European meat, thus ousting local producers from the market. They call on the European Union to ban all exports of untested meat towards these countries, to ensure that ACP consumers are adequately informed through appropriate labelling on foodstuffs exported, and to stop export subsidies that continue to compromise the sustainable development of ACP countries. Such subsidies run counter to the aim of poverty eradication pursued by the ACP/EU partnership. The resolution also invites the European Commission to ban uncontrolled exports of beef and veal and to generally step up controls on the trade in foodstuffs. The ACP States are, for their part, invited to set in place effective protection measures with the help of the Union. In support of these requirements, the resolution stresses that during the third quarter of 2000, Europe exported towards western and central African countries 43,138 tonnes of meat for a value of EUR 36.5 million, and that the sales of British beef in Nigeria increased 300% during the third quarter of this same year.