Brussels, 06/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - After having triggered off the Community rapid reaction system justified by the identification of batches of olive oil residue contaminated by polycyclical aromatic hydrocarbons (see EUROPE of 5 July, p.12), the Spanish authorities provided the other Member States and the Commission all the information required on this incident that is potentially dangerous for the health of Union citizens. The Member Sates were studying, on Friday evening, the appropriate and proportionate response that should be given to this problem.
Within a working group of the scientific food committee, which met in Brussels to examine the situation and coordinate Member State precautionary measures, the Spanish representative specified that this contamination, which comes from a specific production process, only concerned some residues and under no circumstances virgin olive oil. The national authorities are now seeking to identify the products that could contain the contaminated residue in order to establish a list with a view to proceeding, where necessary, to their withdrawal from the market. The Community legislation does not at the present time fix any limit value acceptable for human consumption, in the human food chain, of this harmful substance that comes from the industrial combustion process and is also emitted in a burning cigarette. It will be the task of the relevant scientific committee of the Union to examine the matter, the spokesman for Commissioner David Byrne (health/consumers) told the press.
While the meeting was still under way, the spokesman declared that on the basis of this information, no Member State had announced the intention of adopting protection measures against Spanish olive oil. EUROPE will come back to the results of the meeting.