How to save Union’s bacon in event of new food scare

Date: 08/05/03

By Karen Carstens

MOST EU citizens eat meat, even as many continue to wonder under what conditions it was produced.

In the past decade, food scares ranging from mad cow disease (BSE) to foot-and-mouth disease and the current outbreak of bird flu in the Netherlands and Belgium have left a bad taste in the mouth. Yet both the meat industry and policymakers alike claim that meat is safer now than ever before.

"Meat may be the food product that is controlled most," says Knud Buhl, head of international relations for the Danish Bacon and Meat Council. Or, as MEP Wolfgang Kreissl-Dörfler put it in reference to the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) crisis: "Meat has never been safer we've already eaten everything that was once infected."

Pragmatic food for thought from a German Social Democrat who has voyaged to several major meat-producing nations, including Argentina and Brazil, to monitor how beef, pork and other meat imported into the Union is handled on site.

Kreissl-Dörfler headed the temporary Parliamentary committee on foot-and-mouth disease, which has just concluded its work. Its members agreed on measures suggested by the European Commission on tackling any future outbreak. EU agriculture ministers are expected to sign off on the recommendations next month.

The MEPs agreed with the Commission that a general vaccination policy is not necessary. Instead, emergency inoculations will be ordered only as needed and limited to a given geographic area. Additional measures include a crackdown on illegal imports and monitoring to check overseas abattoirs meet EU standards.

Moreover, only meat off the bone that has been stored for a minimum of six weeks at 3-6° celsius can be exported to the Union, to ensure any viruses are killed off, said Kreissl-Dörfler.

For Buhl, the decision not to impose a general policy of vaccination will be welcome. However the Danish pigmeat industry is concerned it will incur massive costs if the draft directive goes through as is, because it risks non-affected member states losing business even when a disease outbreak is limited to only one or two countries. This is a particularly sore point for Denmark: while it produces only 10 of the EU's pigmeat - Germany and Spain are the leading pork producers - it is responsible for more than 50 of exports.

"In 2001, the foot-and-mouth outbreak was in the UK, Holland and France, but the United States boycotted exports of meat from the whole of the EU," recalls Buhl. "For us, it would be an economic disaster if that happened again. We want to avoid products from a vaccinated animal being circulated in the internal market so that we can avoid being classified as an "FMD" country."

For example, he explains, if there was an outbreak among sheep in Cornwall in the UK, and animals were vaccinated there, that meat would have to be labelled under the new EU proposal. If this meat were allowed to circulate throughout the Union, third countries such as the US and Japan - which is Denmark's biggest pork market - could decide to boycott all European meat, leading to a collapse of the entire EU meat market.

Buhl says the Danish meat industry would like to see a mechanism to ensure that this meat is sold only in the affected region or member state until the vaccinations have stopped. "We want to have 100 segregation so that no one can accuse us of having foot-and-mouth," he said.

Peter Hardwick, international manager at the Brussels office of the British Meat and Livestock Union, said his main concern was about meat produced in poor hygienic conditions finding its way into the EU market. He points out that a new animal by-products regulation requires that "we may have to dry and heat-treat blood: while we are happy to follow this EU regulation, it does mean our processes cost more".

By contrast, some Asian countries do not apply equivalent standards, he says. "Is it right to open our markets to such imports?"

• A EUROPEAN Commission White Paper published in late 2000 laid the groundwork for the consolidation of the EU's food safety and food hygiene

regulations, with the aim of tying some 17 regulations into five "mega-regulations" known as the "hygiene package".

Four management committees, comprised of experts from member states, advise the Commission. They cover beef and veal, sheep and goats, pork, poultry and eggs.

The standing committee on the food chain and animal health, also comprised of member state experts, was formed last year to bring together four committees that oversaw veterinary, foodstuffs, animal nutrition and plant health matters.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), an independent advisory body which began operating in Brussels this year but will eventually move, possibly to Helsinki or Parma, is in the process of taking over several scientific committees from the Commission's health and consumer protection directorate, DG SANCO.

In the past decade, food scares ranging from mad cow disease (BSE) to foot-and-mouth disease and the current outbreak of bird flu in the Netherlands and Belgium have left a bad taste in the mouth. Yet both the meat industry and policymakers alike claim that meat is safer now than ever before.