EU gives food safety go-ahead to new states

"The new member states have made huge progress in recent months in upgrading their laws, systems and food producing factories," David Byrne, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, said in a statement.

"This is a major achievement since the EU requirements are high," he said. "However, the new member states will need to continue to work hard on implementation and enforcement."

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, granted transition periods to some 1,000 establishments -- around eight percent of the total number of food processing operations in the 10 new states -- to give them more time to meet EU standards.

During these transitional periods, products deemed below EU standards will be stamped with a special mark to ensure they are not traded outside the country of origin's domestic market.

These periods vary from three months to a year and will apply to processing plants, dairies and abattoirs in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

"Those establishments granted transition periods will be allowed to continue selling food in their home member state," the Commission statement said.

"However, it will not be eligible to be sold in other member states and will be labelled to prevent this."

The Commission could have used a special measure, known as a safeguard clause and regarded as a "nuclear option", to prevent food exports into other EU countries from the new member states if they had not been up to scratch.

It also authorised new border inspection posts to control imports of food and animals from non-EU countries. By the accession date of May 1, these should number 37 while several posts will close in Italy, Austria and Germany.

Earlier this year, the EU sent veterinary experts to new member state inspection posts to help guard against the sorts of health scares and animal disease epidemics that have swept through the EU's food and farm sectors in recent years, such as mad cow and foot-and-mouth diseases.



Source: Reuters