Brussels, 05/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - As announced (EUROPE of 1 February, p.9) on Wednesday the European Commission adopted a draft regulation aimed at strengthening and better harmonising the official food and animal feed controls, undertaken both at the national and Community level. The Community retains the right to take provisional protective measures and proposes the drafting of a list of criminal sanctions that the Member States should enforce in cases of serious violation of the legislation. The regulation also proposes the creation of a framework for helping developing countries respect Community requirements when they want to export to the EU. The Commission hopes that this new regulation will be implemented in July 2005, except for the provisions on the criminal aspect, which should be enforced one year later.
During a press conference, Commissioner David Byrne felt that the official control systems for food and feed are far from answering the requirements of the 21st century. According to him, they are incomplete and incoherent. The responsibilities of the Member States and the Commission are not defined in a sufficiently clear and precise manner and our trading partners, especially developing countries, do not always understand what we ask of them, explained Mr Byrne. The new regulation will aim to place the system on solid foundations for the next ten years and beyond, asserted the Commissioner, before specifying that the system will permit the improvement of control services of the Member States through a better definition of tasks, through harmonising the competencies of the services and by ensuring that these checks apply to the entire food chain. Through to this strategy, it will be possible to guarantee safer foodstuffs to consumers, stated a delighted Mr Byrne.
The main elements of the proposal are as follows:
Coercive measures: The Commission foresees the adoption, by the Member States, of administrative measures in cases of specific problems concerning the failure respect legislation, and will draft a list of criminal sanctions that may be applied by the countries in cases of serious infringements (failure to respect legislation on the fight against BSE, illegal marketing of specific risk materials or violations of the rules on pesticides and animal welfare). The proposal also foresees coercive measures at the EU level. Thus, when the Commission has evidence that the control system of a Member States is insufficient, it may take provisional measures in view of guaranteeing the protection of human health, animal welfare and the environment. These measures are taken either in cooperation with the States, or on the initiative of the Commission. Notable among these measures is the ban on the marketing of food or feed.
Answering questions from journalists on the sensitive issue of criminal sanctions, Mr Byrne recalled that most of the Member States have national legislations in this area and specified that the Commission's intention is to define the list of activities which, according to it, are of a criminal nature, in order to ensure that these rules are universally applied across the EU. We have left the Member States room to manoeuvre, notably when determining the size of the pecuniary sanctions or the length of prison sentences, added Mr Byrne. According to him, this list of sanctions has the following advantages: - producers will not be able to ignore what is expected of them at the European level; - the Member States will be reassured that Community provisions are equally enforced in all the Member States; - consumer will know that food produced in the EU or from another Member State has respected the same criteria as those of their country.
Better controls in the Member States: The new regulation aims to monitor the controls undertaken by the Member States throughout the production, processing and distribution chain. Thus, the Member States will have to draw-up national control plans while respecting precise criteria (personnel, training and document control procedures). The Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) will carryout audits to assess the performance level of these programmes. In the emergency plans provisions are foreseen that the Member States will have to put in place in case of food scares. The Commission also wants to institute in joint system for controls on imports of food and feed and introduce the possibility of delegating certain control tasks to non-governmental control bodies (for example the testing of samples by certified laboratories). At present, there exist criteria for the analysis by and accreditation of official laboratories only for animal food and feed. The Commission wants to extend these criteria to the veterinary sector.
Third country imports: Training programmes are foreseen to help LDCs more effectively implement the Community control provisions for food and animal feed.