The EU is to attempt to win back consumer confidence in food by setting-up an independent European food agency, EU Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, said yesterday.
The move, which will be overseen by Ireland's commissioner, Mr David Byrne, is acknowledgment that European citizens have been "traumatised by recent food scandals", he told the European Parliament.
"All too many of the recent scares have been well-founded."
In his first major speech to the parliament on a single issue, Mr Prodi, flanked by Mr Byrne, said that the precise model of agency to be used was for consideration. But the options would be spelt out in a white paper on food safety to be published on December 14th.
The agency is to be underpinned by radical reform of EU food law and by consumer representatives having greater input into decision making. This would include involving them in an EU rapid alert system when problems arise in the food chain.
Food safety would be Europe's overriding concern at the forthcoming World Trade Organisation millennium round talks in Seattle, while new European standards on dioxin contamination were imminent.
The latest controversies over dioxins in food and use of human sewage sludge in animal feed manufacture, though banned by EU directive, had culminated in occasions when the citizens of Europe no longer felt sure their food was safe to eat, Mr Prodi said.
He said there were "occasions when they no longer trusted us, or their governments - or even scientists - to make sure that food in Europe is safe and wholesome".
The people of Europe wanted "decisive action, soon", he noted, and they were entitled to it.
"To undermine confidence in European food is to begin destroying Europe's cultural heritage." The agency could be modelled on the European Medicines Evaluation Agency (EMEA) in London which scientifically evaluates drugs. It has a reputation for swiftness and efficiency with notifications of a drug problem emerging within hours. In a food scare it can take weeks. The powerful US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was another potential model, "one of many", which would enable rapid action independent of political institutions.
The big difficulty would be how to ensure democratic accountability.
Mr Byrne said he believed independence and accountability were not mutually exclusive when it came to the agency.
He accepted there was a world of difference between the EMEA and the FDA, but structures best suited to Europe had to be found. A European agency would, for example, be responsible for primary products generated by farmers but not for drugs, he said.
The French government has been told by Mr Byrne to produce scientific evidence to justify its renewed ban on British beef in a move seen as an ultimatum prior to taking legal action. The commissioner said his preliminary advice from the EU's scientific experts indicated the ban was unjustified.
