Expert committees play key role in bid to restore public confidence

Date: 15/07/1999

By Simon Coss

APART from introducing European citizens to arguably the hardest-to-pronounce disease in history, the 1996 bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) episode sparked a crisis of confidence in the EU's food production industry which is still very much in evidence today.

Many observers argue that members of the public would be less concerned about the prospect of eating vegetables containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) if they had not previously been terrified by the thought that their favourite beefburgers might have been contaminated with a fatal disease.

As a direct result of the 'mad cow' scare, the Commission massively increased the size of its Directorate-General for consumer affairs (DGXXIV) and set up eight new scientific committees to look into all aspects of food production. The new committees opened for business at the end of 1997 and have since produced more than 150 opinions on a wide range of food safety issues.

To date, the largest single number of reports has concerned BSE. The multi-disciplinary Scientific Steering Committee - which draws on expertise from all eight committees and has specific responsibility for questions relating to mad cow disease - has provided a total of 23 opinions on subjects including scrapie, the BSE-related illness in sheep and goats; the parts of cows' bodies most likely to transmit BSE to people eating them; and preventing products made from infected cattle being fed to other animals.

But while BSE has been the most pressing issue facing the new committees, they have also turned their attention to a wide range of other questions.

For example, the committee on plant safety has produced 15 reports on the safety of genetically modified (GM) plants over the past 18 months. It is always consulted by the Commission when a company applies for a licence to sell a new GM crop or seed strain within the Union and the group has already given its advice on several gene-altered products.

Last year, members of the committee sparked controversy by recommending that a strain of GM potato should not be approved for EU-wide sale on the grounds that its creators had not adequately assessed the possible long-term risks of their product.

The seven other new committees have also had their hands full over the past year and a half.

The panel on animal nutrition has provided a number of reports on the possible dangers of mixing antibiotics with animal feed following claims that these drugs could enter the food chain and eventually cause humans to become resistant to some of the world's most effective and commonly used medicines. As a result of its findings, the Commission decided to introduce a temporary ban on the use of some antibiotic feed additives.

The committees on animal health and welfare, cosmetics, food safety, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and medical devices have also been busy churning out opinions since November 1997.

While the new committees have only been operating for a relatively short time, EU consumer organisation BEUC has given a guarded 'thumbs up' to their work so far. Spokeswoman Joanna Dober described the new set-up as "a great improvement on the situation pre-BSE".

She insisted, however, that the committees should limit their work to analysing scientific facts and warned experts against the temptation to make what she called 'political judgements' on the issues before them.