Brussels, 20/09/2006 (Agence Europe) - As it is responsible for overseeing the checks carried out by the national authorities competent for the safety of foodstuffs and animal feed, the European Commission intends to feed into the quality of these official checks by dint of training for the inspectors, both within the EU and in third countries which hope to export foodstuffs into the EU. The communication adopted on Wednesday by the College on "Better Training for Safer Food" lays out the strategy planned to accelerate this, and options for the training of inspectors employed by the national administrations and third countries- particularly the developing countries. Three objectives are targeted: obtaining comparable levels of quality for checks carried out in the Member States, better understanding of the EU's level of requirements on exporters from third countries, and the full implementation of the legislative arsenal the EU took on in 2004 (regulation 882/2004, which entered into force in January 2006) to guarantee food safety in the EU from farm to table, in the interest of human health, animal health, plant protection and the smooth functioning of the internal market. Markos Kyprianou, the European Commissioner for Consumer Protection, said that "effective checks are a key factor in ensuring that European legislation (...) is observed and that foodstuffs and animal feed offered for sale answer the very high safety standards which we have set in place. Training for staff responsible for the checks is of decisive importance in guaranteeing that these are carried out adequately, exhaustively and uniformly".
Training activities were started in 2006 by initiative of Directorate General Health/Consumers of the Commission, with ad hoc programmes targeting such areas as: Bird flu, a risk and prevention identification system for the contamination of foodstuffs and animal feed, import standards for products from third countries, animal byproducts, animal welfare and veterinary checks on the borders. By the end of 2006, 1500 participants- representing most of the Member States- will have benefited from training, at a total cost of 4 million EUR. In 2007, training seminars will follow the same scheme, with just one variation upon it: certain programmes will be designed for the Member States (checks on animal disease and microbiological criteria in foodstuffs, materials in contact with food, assessment and registration of pesticides), whilst others will specifically target third countries (implementing food tests, familiarisation with the early warning system). In total, some 3000 delegates will be trained. The Commission proposes that this activity be stepped up in the following years, so that some 9000 civil servants can be trained by the end of 2009. Thereafter, cruising speed will have been reached, with 6000 officials being trained every year, at an annual cost which has been estimated at 15 million EUR. The management of the training programme will be delegated to an executive agency, which will be responsible for selecting participants, course logistics, training, results follow-up and networking the national training agencies. The Commission will analyse the cost-advantages of this option. In the meantime, it will continue to organise training programmes itself.