Brussels, 09/10/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 7 October, the European Parliament agriculture committee succeeded in finding a compromise among the main political groups on protecting customers' rights to information and industry's intellectual property rights, and adopted (31 votes for, none against and two abstentions) the report by Friedrich Wilhelm Graefe zu Baringdorf (Greens/EFA, German), bringing greater flexibility to animal feeds authorisation and labelling rules. The European Parliament will debate the report (co-decision, first reading) in November or December.
Following the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and dioxin crises, tough rules were laid down for the animal feed industry in 2002, in particular a requirement to state all raw materials used in the manufacture of feed as a percentage of the total weight. This “open declaration” system was one of the key demands of MEPs at the time. However, the compromise agreed with the Council of Ministers provided for a tolerance of +/-15% of the value indicated granted to producers with a right for users to be told the exact amount of each ingredient on request. The European Court of Justice, in a judgment on a complaint that this system infringes intellectual property rights, ruled that the principle of “open declaration” is valid, but that providing “exact information on request” is disproportionate in relation to the stated objective of health protection. In addition, according to the Commission, improved early warning systems in the event of contamination mean that the rules can be handled in a more flexible way.
Last March the Commission proposed that the rules on labelling of compound animal feed (for both pets and livestock) should be brought into line with the existing rules for food for human consumption, requiring only a list of the ingredients present in decreasing order of weight. The customer should always have the right to exact quantitative data on demand from the manufacturer.
The EP committee agrees with both these principles but wants to clarify how this extra information is to be made available. MEPs say that maintaining a tolerance of +/-15% regarding the exact amounts provides sufficient safeguards for producers' manufacturing secrets. They, therefore, oppose the idea of adding a right to refuse to divulge the information on intellectual property grounds. They also call for national authorities to be in a position to provide, if duly justified, the information sought by customers, but on condition that the customers sign a confidentiality clause.
Catalogue of feed materials and code of conduct for producers. Following the food scares of the nineties, which were often caused by contaminated feed, the EP repeatedly called for a positive list of authorised feed materials. Instead of a positive list approved by the Community, the amendments adopted call for a catalogue of feed materials managed by the industry, and for manufacturers to be required to notify the use of new feed materials without delay. A similar set of rules would apply to a code of conduct drawn up by professionals in order to facilitate application of the EU rules for feed labelling. Lastly, MEPs call for the list of ingredients banned in animal feed which was compiled in 2004 and includes household waste, waste water and packaging, to be included in the new legislation. (L.C./transl.rt)