16th International EFLA Congress
in Cooperation with the Food Industries Association of Austria (FIAA)
How to Make Food Law in an Enlarged Europe: New Trends and Challenges
21 – 22 September 2006
Penta Renaissance Hotel Vienna

OPENING REMARKS

Charles Cockbill, Acting President

The body of EU Food Law has expanded considerably in recent years. Each new technical development with food production and processing seems to have provoked a reaction with the Commission and those that lobby it and a new, often detailed, law has been the outcome. We now have a very complex structure of food law; so complex, I suggest, that many involved in the production and processing of food are unaware of all the details. This could particularly be true for the small and medium sized enterprises, which the EU wishes to encourage, where the resources to study all the ramifications of developing food law are not available as they are with the large multinational companies. If this is the case, this complexity may be defeating the declared objectives of consumer protection and safety.

The Commission White Paper of 1985 prepared when Lord Cockfield, the industry commissioner, was responsible for food law matters, envisaged the harmonisation of essential EU food law to permit the free movement of foodstuffs between the member states in accordance with the objectives of the Treaty of Rome. That White Paper recognised the complexity of foodstuffs and avoided excessive detail especially where decisions and conclusions could not be based on objective criteria. It wrote about the great culinary diversity of the EU which it aimed to maintain. There were then only 10 member states. How much more diverse is it now with 25 member states and others waiting. Diversity and standardisation are not easy bedfellows.

The publicity surrounding the food scares of the 1990s and the consequent move of food law responsibility to DG SANCO was a significant sea change. The primacy of the free movement of goods in EU food law making was replaced by the objectives of food safety and consumer protection. Not that these other objectives were absent before; rules on food additives, food contaminants and food labelling were as much about safety and consumer protection as they were about fair trade. The move has however had a significant effect on the nature of food law. EU food law has moved from a framework within which all member states could operate to more detailed provisions which in that detail often cause problems for one member state or more. Since ultimately the decisions on EU food law are political, these problems have resulted in national derogations. Derogations are not harmonisation and can in themselves be barriers to trade.

There have been initiatives from time to time for deregulation and simplification but these have largely come to nothing. Admittedly the simplification and consolidation of the hygiene directives has been successful, but this stands alone. In other areas there has been no bold initiative to remove moribund or outdated laws. Rather the emphasis has been in the other direction. Let us take the labelling rules as an example. This is one of the earliest directives, predating the 1985 White Paper, and was based on the Codex Alimentarius standard. The aim as executed in the early directive was to ensure that consumers were fully informed as to the nature, contents, handling and shelf life of pre-packaged foodstuffs. Over the years these basic needs have been added to with messages about nutrition, health, claims, packaging, production methods and other matters leading to such complex labels as to leave many consumers either bored or confused by a plethora of semi-scientific information. Many of these issues are more suited to education or information programmes, but there is a suspicion that extra information on the label is an easy option which relieves the authorities of the responsibility of educating the public and transfers it to the food manufacturer or retailer.

I have used the labelling directive as an example of how rules have become over-complex because it is an obvious one where decisions can easily be subjective rather than objective. What is needed in their promised review of food law is for the EU organisations to be bold and be serious about reducing the burden of over-detailed law. The review needs to identify under each of the objectives of health and safety, information and free movement of goods what are the essential matters that EU food law needs to address; to concentrate on these; and be bold enough to discard the rest. Legal requirements on food should be about what the consumer needs and not about what consumers would like to have; the latter is a matter of marketing for traders and not for legislators.