SPEECH/01/397

EMBARGO : 15:00

Mr David BYRNE
European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection

Food Safety, Health and Nutrition

Emerging Issues

Food Business Forum on Global Standards for Food Safety

Geneva, 20 September 2001

I would like to begin by thanking you for your kind invitation to speak at this
Conference. I am delighted to be here in Geneva today to address the CIES
Conference. It only seems like yesterday when I addressed you last year in Dublin,
so much has happened in the meantime.
I would like to take this opportunity to speak to you here in Geneva about the
importance of safe and healthy food, and indeed a healthy diet. I will also add a few
words about biotechnology in the food area.
My portfolio in the Commission comprises of responsibilities for both food and public
health. And I can assure you that we have given the highest importance and priority
to these interrelated areas.
The first aspect is food safety.
There is no doubt that consumers have the right to expect, at a very minimum, safe
food.
We should aim within the European Union to have the safest food supply in the
world and our ambition is to develop systems that deliver this aim.
A safe food chain from farm to fork, correctly regulated and effectively controlled, is
the road to building confidence in the European food supply.
I fully accept that in many respects food has never been safer. But I am also fully
aware that zero risk is rarely achievable, as in most other human activities. In
saying this, I would like to make it clear that Europe, nevertheless, has one of the
best food industries in the world; and also one of the safest food control systems.
The challenge is to make the systems even better. A particularly important aspect
of this is ensuring that Member States themselves rigorously enforce standards that
are in place.
Very often there is the temptation not to do so. But then when a problem emerges
through non-respect for existing legislation, we also very often hear cries for more
rigorous legislation, as a political alibi for non-compliance in the first place!
We must get away from that culture and really place our citizens, as consumers,
first.
In order to rebuild European citizens confidence that their food is safe from the
farm to the fork, the European Commission adopted last year the White Paper on
Food Safety, putting forward an ambitious action plan to transform todays EU food
policy and better respond to the today's concerns.
Very many of you will be very familiar with the White Paper and its food safety
Action Plan of over 80 measures that we in the Commission intend to adopt, with
our Member States and the European Parliament as appropriate, in the coming
short few years.
Our proposal for a Regulation laying down the general principles of food law,
establishing a European Food Authority, and laying down procedures in matter of
food safety, is the cornerstone of our legislative approach. I am confident that this
crucial piece of legislation to be adopted by the European Parliament and the
Council by the end of this year.
It provides for a modern, dynamic and effective legal framework for food safety.
This framework will be based on robust science and to support this, the correct
administrative structures where consumer health is the driving force.

The Regulation lays down the legitimate objectives and definitions of food law with
the primary aim being to ensure a high level of health protection. It outlines the
commitment to ensure that food law shall be based on high quality, transparent,
independent scientific advice.
Most importantly it provides an overarching requirement for only safe food to be
placed on the market and ensures the rights of individuals to have access only to
safe food.
I know that members of CIES are concerned to ensure that they will fully meet this
requirement. It applies equally, of course, to all other operators in the food chain.
One of the key aspects of this Regulation is the creation of the European Food
Authority, which will provide the scientific risk assessment on all matters relating
either directly or indirectly to food safety. I anticipate that the Authority will
commence operations as early as possible next year.
The second aspect of my intervention is that the food we eat should not only be
safe but should also be conducive to overall good health and well being.
Nutrition is recognised as one of the major health determinants. It is currently
estimated that an unhealthy diet and a sedentary life style may contribute to the
cause of up to one in three cases of cancers, and for approximately one third of
premature deaths due to cardiovascular diseases in Europe.
Nutrition is also an important determinant for the prevalence of obesity, which
continues to rise in the Community both amongst children and adults.
To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, the latest figures suggest that 1 in
10 of Irish adults are obese and nearly one third are overweight. Whilst in England
nearly 1 in 5 adults are obese and, in total, nearly two thirds of men and just over
half of women are either overweight or obese.
The problem is even more acute in the United States. And I believe that we must
learn lessons from the growing trend towards obesity here in the European Union
and take action.
There are some major trends in the nutritional field, which are shared by most
Member States.
- The consumption of fruit and vegetables is still very low;
- The energy intake from fat, and especially from saturated fat is high;
- The consumption of cereals has fallen by one quarter since 1960 for Europe as a
whole, while meat consumption has increased;
- Recent dietary data suggests that deficiencies of iron, iodine and folate exist in
many Member States.
It would seem that the dietary habits of the European Union population are not ideal
and that the promotion of a healthy diet is increasingly important. Areas of activity
by the Commission are on food legislation, the development of an EU nutrition
policy and addressing nutrition in the new public health programme.
The Commission has a long-established record in the field of harmonising food
legislation.
The basic aims of the harmonisation have been to ensure a high level of public
health protection and the free circulation of foodstuffs across the Community.
However, the White Paper on Food Safety recognised that there is scope for
improving the information that is provided to the consumer. And proposals will be
brought forward on the harmonisation of rules on food labelling, claims and nutrition
labelling.

I have already published my proposals for amending the Food Labelling legislation
to introduce full ingredient labelling of compound ingredients. The new labelling will
ensure that consumers are given much more information about the composition of a
food product.
It will also assist consumers who suffer from allergies or food intolerance by giving
them comprehensive information about the composition of products especially with
respect to known allergens.
Indeed my proposal is to label both foods and alcoholic drinks which contain
sulphites in concentrations of at least 10mg/kg.
Another aspect of labelling is information on the nutrient content of products. This
labelling is an important tool for informing consumers of the nutritional value of
foods.
After nearly 10 years of application of the existing legislation, I intend to look at how
the provision of nutrient content information can be improved and enhanced to
facilitate the development of better information for consumers.
I am well aware that information on labels on its own is not sufficient.
Consumers should have the knowledge, or should be better informed, in order to be
able to use labels to good effect. Or, to make appropriate choices for their diet and
in order to be able to drive the market through their purchasing power.
I would like to examine appropriate actions in co-operation with Member States in
this area. This is an issue that is constantly coming up as part of the Round Table
process Franz Fischler and I have launched on Food Quality, Safety and
Production.
We are also looking at how to develop a more coherent nutrition policy currently,
aiming at enabling citizens to make healthy and well informed choices as regards
nutrition, and to make the healthy choice available, affordable and attractive.
For this purpose, the various Community policies related to nutrition will have to be
re-evaluated from a public health nutrition perspective. This, rather ambitious
exercise, aims at ultimately the definition of a more coherent nutritional policy at
Community level.
The Commission has devoted substantial resources to research that is relevant to
nutrition and will continue to do so.
It has also contributed resources to bring together scientific expertise in order to
review existing scientific evidence about the relationship of intake of nutrients and
certain diseases.
We are considering the development of Recommendations on European Dietary
Guidelines and within this context this scientific evidence will be taken into account.
Our aim is that the recommendations would help the people in Europe to make
healthy choices, and that the recommendations will support the Member States in
their development of a nutrition policy at the national level.
As you may know, the Commission has recently proposed a new Community-wide
public health programme. When adopted and implemented this programme will
replace the current eight action programmes in the field of public health.
In this new framework, the main aim is to protect and improve public health, and we
are drawing special attention to the integration of human health in all Community
policies.

This programme focuses on three main priorities:

- Improving health information and knowledge;
- Responding rapidly to threats to human health;
- Addressing health determinants.
The programme provides means for actions on nutrition, promotion of physical
activity and the fight against excessive alcohol consumption. Recommendations on
food will inform the Community population of the advantages or the risks they take
while adopting one or another dietary habit. The impact that healthy dietary habits
would represent for the well being and the health of the population is evident.
Finally, may I be permitted to say a few words on the subject of biotechnology.
More particularly concerning genetically modified food.
There is no doubt about the enormous potential of biotechnology. Take the medical
field, as a case in point, where already people are availing of biotech treatments
that save lives and protect patients from viral challenges.
Take the situation on rare diseases. As most of them are caused by genetic
disorders, the advances in gene technology will contribute very much to the
understanding of the causes of these diseases and perhaps lead to cures.
However, the perceived absence of benefits to the final consumer is one of the main
impediments to a more generalised social acceptance of the use of GMOs in agrifood production.
Very often the debate on GMOs has generated more heat than light. We must
ensure, as political leaders, that the unbiased facts on biotechnology are placed
before our citizens to see and understand. Too many false claims have been made
which do not reflect the science-based approach to food safety that I advocated
since coming into office.
I am, therefore, calling on all sides to have a rational debate and to take a balanced
approach. I would add here that food industry leaders play their responsible part in
that debate.
One of the key messages from the European Commission is that the potential we
are envisioning for life sciences and biotechnology can only be realised if there is
broad public support. We see an increasing need for awareness and enlightened
policy decisions based on rational fact.
From a consumer point of view, the fact that most of the GMOs currently on the
market are not geared to deliver specific, clear consumer benefits, has given rise to
scepticism. This is entirely independent from safety questions. Indeed, I am
sympathetic to the fact that for some applications of biotechnology, the benefits may
not be so obvious at this stage.
I believe, nevertheless, that the public attitude towards GM food can change once
products with clear benefit to consumers are marketed.
However, before we even get to that stage, we must ensure that the optimal
regulatory environment is in place. Consumers, whether they be farmers or
shoppers, must have confidence in the regulatory framework.
A high level of protection, consumer choice and transparent, uniform and efficient
authorisation procedures are key elements in fostering social acceptance and trust
in the application of biotechnology to food and feed.
In this regard, I would like to draw your attention to the two proposals on
biotechnology adopted by the Commission in late July and which are based exactly
on these principles.

Our first legislative proposal, which concerns GM food and feed,

- ensures a high level of protection requiring genetically modified food and feed,
including food and feed which are produced from a GMO, to undergo a scientific
risk assessment prior to the placing on the market,
- enables the consumer to exercise a freedom of choice by reinforcing current
labelling requirements and
- provides for improved, transparent and streamlined Community level procedures
for authorisation involving the European Food Authority.
The second proposal on traceability, establishes harmonised and coherent
Community requirements for traceability of GMOs as well as for GM food and feed.
I do not intend to go through the considerable detail of these draft pieces of
legislation today. But let me say a few words about labelling of GM foodstuffs.
As I indicated earlier, all foods, whether pre-packaged or not, are subject to
extensive labelling requirements under EC legislation. The objective of the new GM
proposal is to inform consumers about the exact nature and characteristics of the
food to enable them to make individual choices.
The current EU labelling scheme provides that GM foods have to be labelled if
traces of DNA or protein resulting from the genetic modification are detectable in
the final product.
I believe that we can do better than that. The choice that I want to give Europe's
consumers is very simple - "I can choose whether or not to buy food produced from
a GMO".
The Commission's proposal reinforces the labelling of genetically modified products
by ensuring labelling of:
- All foods produced from GMOs, irrespective of whether DNA or protein of GM
origin is detectable in the final product. This will then comprise highly refined oils
and products composed thereof;
- All genetically modified feed. For example it will require labelling of corn gluten
feed produced from GM maize.
These requirements respond to an overwhelming need to enable the consumer or
users to exercise freedom of choice.
Moreover, I believe that an appropriate
labelling scheme is one of the key issues in ensuring and fostering increased public
confidence and acceptance of the application of gene-technology in the agri-food
sector.
In conclusion, may I thank you again for your kind invitation to address you here in
Geneva and wish your proceedings every success.