Council Minutes, 24 June 2008

IMPORTS – Council discussions: Food, feed, animal and plant imports: safety and compliance with Community rules

The following is an extract from the Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting, 23 and 24 June 2008

Memorandum from the French delegation (10698/08)

The Council took note of the concerns expressed by the French delegation in a joint Memorandum with the Austrian, Bulgarian, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourg, Polish, Romanian, and Slovak delegations.

Belgium , Cyprus , Germany , Greece , Portugal and Spain supported the French suggestion to work further on the issue at Council level in the coming months, concentrating on the safety and compliance with Community rules of food, feed, animal and plant imports.

The Danish, Maltese, Netherlands , Swedish and United Kingdom delegations, while sharing the views that foodstuffs should offer the highest level of safety irrespective of where they have been produced, drew the Council's attention to the need to respect WTO rules, to develop international standards and to promote labelling as a means of better informing the consumer.

A copy of the memorandum is available on this site - see: French Memorandum: Imports