Strong stomach needed for food clean-up

Date: 13/01/2000

European Commission President Romano Prodi has made restoring public confidence in food in the wake of the recent health scares a top priority for his term in office. Simon Taylor examines the scale of the challenge facing his team and assesses the proposals for concrete measures unveiled this week

TRYING to restore public confidence in food safety is a bit like trying to push toothpaste back into a tube. Once it is gone, it is the devil's own work to get it back.

And as if that was not hard enough following the string of recent food scares in the EU ranging from BSE to dioxins, European Commission President Romano Prodi and his team have set themselves an additional challenge by making food safety a priority for their five-year term of office.

By giving such a high profile to efforts at Union level to give people greater confidence in the food they eat, the Commission wants to demonstrate that the EU is tackling the subjects which are of most concern to ordinary citizens and not just focusing on economic or trade issues like the euro or the single market.

But Prodi's strategy of using food safety in this way is fraught with risk.

Even if the proposals unveiled this week succeed in improving food safety standards, making the public aware of this will be far from easy because safety is seen as the natural order of things and the issue only captures the headlines when things go wrong.

The White Paper underlines the failings in the current system which have been exposed by the recent health scares. "Community and member state food-safety systems have been under unprecedented pressure during recent feed and food emergencies," it states. "These emergencies have exposed weaknesses which call for action by the responsible authorities - Commission, member states and the Parliament - to reinforce, improve and further develop existing systems."

The cornerstone of the new strategy drawn up by Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne and enterprise chief Erkki Liikanen is the creation of a new food safety agency which would become the leading source of definitive food advice in the Union.

Yet although all member states have voiced support for the idea in principle, the project is fraught with difficulties.

While campaigners would like to see a new agency with real teeth to investigate and act swiftly when safety standards are flouted, the emphasis in the White Paper is on the new authority acting as a provider of scientific advice rather than a kind of culinary FBI.

The report acknowledges that "there is a serious concern that a transfer of regulatory powers to an independent authority could lead to an unwarranted dilution of democratic accountability". The Commission is, however, keen to keep alive the possibility of a stronger body which would require a change to the Union's treaty, pointing out that this could be added to the list of constitutional changes to be tackled during this year's Intergovernmental Conference.

But the true test of the Commission's proposals will be whether they can solve the key problem which has so far undermined the EU's ability to tackle food scares: the fact that the system is only as good as the weakest link in the chain.

The dioxin crisis in Belgian was exacerbated by the fact that the national authorities waited two months before acting to stop contaminated animal feed being sold to pig and poultry farmers at home and abroad. Once the Commission was informed, emergency procedures such as the rapid-alert system kicked in quickly and limited the scale of the crisis in other EU member states, but much of the damage had already been done.

Drawing lessons from the dioxin scandal, the Commission observes that "one of the weakest links in the system is the lack of a clear commitment from all interested parties to give an early warning about a potential risk" and adds that a "lack of internal controls and lack of traceability allowed the dioxin crisis to develop and expand throughout the whole food chain".

Under the current system, responsibility for food safety is shared between different bodies in a way which makes applying common standards difficult.

Member states are in charge of seeing that abattoirs and cutting plants comply with EU meat-hygiene rules and that foodstuffs are not contaminated with harmful substances. The Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) in Dublin, reinforced in the wake of the BSE crisis, is responsible for checking on national authorities to ensure that they are

carrying out their monitoring tasks properly. But the FVO does not have the resources or the political backing to go into every slaughterhouse or processing unit to make sure that the rules are being followed.

The Commission hopes that by taking a more coordinated approach to the problem within the Union, standards can be raised to the level of the highest so that the weakest link is strong enough to minimise the risk of future crises.

To do this, the White Paper calls for a "Community framework of national controls systems". This would involve setting 'operational criteria' centrally which the national authorities in every member state would have to meet and which would be audited by inspectors from the FVO in Dublin.

To ensure that EU governments have sufficient incentive to put their houses in order, the Commission also suggests that it should be given additional powers to act when member states fail to make the grade.

One option might be to give the Commission the authority to withhold money, or to reclaim funds already allocated, along the lines of the current clearance-of-accounts system which imposes financial penalties on countries which fail to apply adequate controls when paying out agricultural funds.

The European consumers' association BEUC agrees with the Commission that the new authority should be the final arbiter on scientific questions about food safety, but insists that the body should be politically accountable so it can be held responsible for any failings in policy.

"We would support the creation of a food agency which was independent but it must be accountable to the European Court of Justice and it needs to have real transparency in its decision-making process," insists spokeswoman Valerie Thompson.

Whatever the outcome of the debate over the future remit and responsibilities of the food safety agency, there is one area in which the Commission's initiative will undoubtedly make a positive contribution to improving food safety - namely, by identifying existing loopholes in the web of rules and taking a systematic approach to eliminating these failings.

These include the fact that the EU's rapid-alert system, which requires member states to notify the Commission and other EU national authorities about possible food scares, did not apply to animal feed - the source of the Belgian dioxins crisis.

Another major weakness is that when crises occur, the Commission does not currently have the power to take emergency action if the product in question is animal feed or derived from plants as opposed to meat products. Tackling these issues will make a significant difference.

On top of these questions comes the perennial problem which arises whenever policy makers propose a new initiative: who is going to pay for it?

The new approach to food safety has enormous costs implications, not least to pay for top-flight experts to work in the new safety authority. Implementing the new strategy will also mean a major reallocation of resources to achieve meet Prodi's goal of getting up to 60 new pieces of legislation through the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament in time to ensure that all the proposed measures are introduced by 2002.

As the White Paper emphasises, "the efficacy of the authority will ultimately depend on the adequacy, in terms of size and quality, of the human, financial and physical resources available".

Whatever improvements in food safety the planned reforms unveiled this week deliver, no one believes that an enhanced regime along the lines proposed will be able to eliminate the possibility of new food emergencies in the future. "There is nothing in the White Paper which would avoid another crisis," said one food industry expert.

The public will therefore only be able to judge the Prodi Commission on whether its new strategy is better placed to deal with crises when they occur, avoiding the prevarication of the past which has done so much to dent the Union's image as a defender of the public interest.

Major feature. European Commission President Romano Prodi has made restoring public confidence in food in the wake of the recent health scares a top priority for his term in office. Feature examines the scale of the challenge facing his team and assesses the proposals for concrete measures.