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An Euro-barometer survey last year revealed the issue most important to consumers today: food safety. More than two thirds of consumers (68 %) were worried about the safety of their food. The BSE crisis is not the only but probably the most glaring example of how consumer confidence in food and food safety has been shaken. But genetically modified food, the use of growth promoters, the existence of pesticide and dioxin residues in food, salmonella, E-Coli, anti-microbial resistance all add to widespread consumer unease about what they eat.
Food safety is a joint responsibility of agriculture, industry and public authorities. The consumer, who is the last link of the chain, has also its own responsibilities, mainly for proper storage and cooking.
The European Commission has learnt from the BSE crisis and decided to place consumer health and food safety at the centre of a new political initiative. It has restructured its services and made health and the quality of life, in particular food safety, one of its five priorities for 1998.
One of the lessons of the BSE crisis was that shaken consumer confidence could only be regained through transparency. So the « new » Directorate-General for consumer policy and consumer health protection took this guideline very seriously. As you know, the scientific advice system of the Commission has been completely overhauled one year ago. And now, for the first time, the 131 scientists in nine scientific committees were selected by a public call for expression of interest on the basis of published criteria. Their latest scientific advice is available with a few mouse-clicks: names of members, agendas and opinions as well as minority opinions are put on the Internet immediately after adoption.
The work of these Scientific Committees is a benefit for all concerned parties, industry at first. Here it has to be underlined that this is a free service, unlike what happens in the pharmaceutical sector.
On the other hand, the EU Food and Veterinary Office was also reorganised and the reporting system speeded up. Today, results of inspections are publicly available on the Internet. Nobody is able to hide deficiencies in the surveillance systems and, as we have seen recently, this transparency has really become a force for making improvements. I think that the EU has created one of the most transparent inspection services of the world, if not the most transparent!
The BSE crisis had also shown too clearly how important it is that consumers in all EU-countries have the right to damage awards when unsafe food and unsafe primary agricultural products are put onto the market. The existing product liability Directive includes processed food, but it does not cover primary agricultural products such as meat, fruit and vegetables. This loophole became evident with the BSE crisis.
It is also obvious for genetically modified organisms: while possible risks arising from ketchup produced from GMO tomatoes are covered because it is processed food, the producer of the GMO tomato itself would not be liable. Therefore, on 1 October 1997, the Commission proposed to extend the existing product liability rules to primary agricultural products.
If the amendment is adopted, producers, farmers and merchants would then be liable if a GMO or any other primary agricultural product they developed, planted, commercialised or processed turned out to be unsafe, even when it had been approved by the authorities. This in my opinion will be a big step forward for the consumer and in European product safety policy. This amended Proposal is now in its first reading in Council and Parliament and may be approved next year.
Every liability law has a twin objective: safe products and fair compensation to injured persons. But a general safety policy as well as product liability rules are not without cost. We must be clear. Safety costs money, but public health also costs money. Also, there is hardly such as thing as « zero risk » - or it can only be obtained with disproportionately high costs. And in the long run, the costs of any liability system are passed on to consumers. I want to say that society therefore has to decide how much it is willing to pay for safety and how much risk it is going to accept. The question of « acceptable risk » might be an ethical one. So to put it bluntly: society seems for instance to accept the cost of smoking-related illnesses or road accidents more easily than those of food poisoning do. So far, misuse of "Viagra" is responsible for more deathsthan BSE. However, "Viagra" is regarded as a kind of « wonder-drug ». Again a question of a public society debate.
Now for new products, different questions have to be answered: should they be prohibited as long as science has not yet proven that they are harmless? Or vice versa should they be authorised until science has identified real dangers? It makes me remember the first trains, which crawled along the countryside. People at that time were concerned that their cows would drop dead and worse still, they were convinced that man could not survive at such high speed. They were proven wrong and now we can go from Paris to Lyon in 2 hours, and nobody complains about it, but from time to time a dramatic train crash will remind us that there is no such thing as zero risk.
It means that for each problem, which contains an unknown element, a risk assessment has to be made and a political decision taken on how much risk we accept. The Commission also has committed itself to act on the basis of the precautionary principle when there is a scientific uncertainty. We are currently developing guidelines for the application of this principle in order to avoid an irrational use of this principle. It is not possible to block or reject scientific research or technological progress, nor should we. The same holds true for biotechnology. It is there, and it is there to stay. It has many facets, but maybe we tend to see it for the moment as only giving us genetically modified plants or in helping insurance companies reject customers with hidden genetic defects. However, it has already given us good.
For instance, we can now treat children, who suffer from dwarfism without risking contaminating them with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, as was the case when we had to rely on growth hormone extracted from cadavers. We can also alleviate the sufferings of haemophiliacs with unlimited sources of coagulation factors free from the terrible AIDS or Hepatitis C viruses, which have killed so many patients. And I think that for this alone, we should be grateful to biotechnology.
On the other hand, I am sympathetic to the fact that for some products, the benefit to man may not be so obvious. Additionally, with GMO plants, we are not talking about the product of a genetically modified organism, which is contained in the production unit, but of GMOs themselves set free in the environment. So I can fully understand that in some Member States there is no great enthusiasm for such plants. Recent cases give indications that public authorities are more sensitive to the concern of population regarding GMO, a concern which is not always based on pure science. This could be seen as a move to a more precautionary approach in this field. We cannot hide to ourselves that we are facing a very difficult moment for the progress of GMO products. A public acceptance, which one could have reasonably expected to occur, is very far from being reached. From my part, I have always been a supporter of a very prudent and a forthcoming approach.
Prudent approach and for this reason I have strongly asked and obtained some of the changes introduced into the Proposal for amending the directive on deliberate release of GMOs into the environment: such as compulsory consultation of a scientific committee, monitoring GMOs and their effects once they are on the market and are circulating free in the environment, re-evaluation of authorisations after 7 years. These are amendments which industry should totally support as they can contribute to restore confidence of those consumers and environmentalists who continue to believe that these new products will create irreversible changes. Only when scientists have given a green light we could successfully convince our population that all necessary health guarantees are in place.
Forthcoming approach and for this I have asked that a GMO free line of food production be established. This is a line of products which, following the example of organic farming, would contain no genetically modified organisms. The failure to offer such a "GMO-free line" would run counter to the basic right of consumers to chose which products they buy and would increase the hostility of certain consumers which fear that GMO will soon be present everywhere in their food and that they will be force-fed with GMO.
But here again it is easy to say, more complex to establish. One has to be realistic and set reasonable demands for the concept GMO-free. For example, it is clear in my mind that as a minimum standard, such products should not be derived from GMO raw materials, such as GMO maize or GMO soya. But should animals fed with GMO grain be considered fit to enter a GMO-free line or not? This means possibly going a big step further and I am still studying the question and looking forward to your discussions. However, I am rather clear as to whether animals, which have received a biotech vaccine, could be considered within a GMO-free line. In this case, my answer would be « yes », because the health and welfare of the animal should take precedence over any other consideration and there is a direct benefit to the animal. People who are particularly sensitive to this aspect could have recourse to products from organic farming. But setting the standards of a GMO free line too high will just duplicate organic farming and involve costs so high that the choice of consumers will be restricted by economic constraints and thus kill the idea from the very beginning!
As consumers, Europeans are alert. Until recently they devoted their energy primarily to making informed selections of industrial products; they were less fastidious in their choice for basic foodstuffs. But these times are definitely over, as is the time when limited food availability meant limited choice. Now consumers are increasingly aware of the importance of safe food and the impact of certain products on their health. They resist the idea of a passive role and are more and more conscious of their ability to shape the market with their buying power. They have decided to use their right of choice and quite rightly so; they demand adequate information; they want to know what they eat, what it is derived from and where it is produced.
During the last years, food questions have been reduced to a matter of « science »: What level of pesticides is still acceptable, how dangerous are additives, sweeteners or colorants and so on. But food is more than science. It is not just eating nutrients, especially for Europeans. Food is also pleasure, it is a way of life, for some it is ethics. Food is part of our culture. Fortunately, the standardised « European eater » does not exist. Meals are very diverse throughout the Union and consumers want to have a choice. And I firmly believe that we should be giving them this choice!