Food agency has appetite for work

The Parma-based agency handed the task of boosting food safety has its plate full with seals, beef, poultry, fish and crustaceans. Emily Smith reports.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has a clear role to play when it comes to human welfare. The Parma-based European Commission agency, which was established in 2002, produces scientific advice on the safety of various food products and additives, as well as helping the Commission develop improved food labelling rules for health and nutrition claims.

But EFSA also spends much time producing opinions on animal welfare. Its animal health and welfare panel holds about three working group meetings a week and seven full sessions every year. Separate panels on the food chain and on animal feed additives also work on issues affecting farm animals and household pets.

The basic thinking behind EFSA’s animal health work, explains Executive Director Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle, is that "any animal with any disease is not suitable for human consumption". "We have to take care of the whole food chain," she adds.

Geslain-Lanéelle says that the EU has to defend a general principle.

"The protocol on the protection and welfare of animals, annexed to the EU treaty, obliges the European institutions to pay full regard to the welfare of animals."

This year EFSA has published opinions on animal diseases including BSE in cows and salmonella in poultry, as well as the role played by wild birds in the spread of avian flu. It has also recommended safeguard measures to protect pets from melamine - a chemical found to have contaminated cat and dog food in the US.

So far, EFSA has focused on traditional pets and farmyard animals, as well as common wild birds. The coming months, Geslain-Lanéelle explains, will see it branch into less conventional territory.

Following several requests from member states and EU institutions, EFSA is broadening the scope of its animal welfare remit to cover fish, crustaceans, and even molluscs.

A report on the welfare of salmon in fish-farms should be published this November, followed by advice on other species next year.

The EFSA opinions will look at the living conditions on fish farms and the way fish are killed. For crustaceans and molluscs, they will rely more heavily on observations assessing the muscular and nerve reactions of shellfish when caught and cooked.

EFSA will also produce an opinion on the slaughter of seals, scheduled for October. The Commission has asked EFSA to assess evidence for the effect of different slaughter methods on seals, following accusations from animal welfare groups that seal hunting causes unnecessary animal suffering.

EFSA is working on the seal opinion with representatives from Norway and north America: the regions most heavily involved with seal trade. Hunters from the world’s largest seal hunt, carried out each spring in Canada, say their slaughter methods are the most humane possible.

Although seal meat is rarely eaten in the EU, seal oil can be bought as a dietary supplement. Stavros Dimas, the European environment commissioner, has said he would like a ban on the import and sale of seal products in the EU on animal welfare grounds, if there is sufficient evidence to support one.

The Commission says it will decide what action to propose when it has the EFSA opinion.

Any decision is likely to be controversial. Geslain-Lanéelle agrees that animal health and welfare is a sensitive issue for Europeans. But she says that applies to many of the areas in which her agency is asked to produce opinions. "Think of genetic modification. Or food additives," she says.

"We have a lot of challenges - that’s one of the reasons why EFSA was created."

The Parma-based agency handed the task of boosting food safety has its plate full with seals, beef, poultry, fish and crustaceans. Emily Smith reports.