Italy wants own food safety agency, beside EU's
Date: 23-Aug-01
Country: ITALY
"I have proposed setting up an Italian food safety agency to work with the European authority of the same name, which we hope will be based in Parma, in order to guarantee in our country maximum protection of consumers," Farm Minister Giovanni Alemanno said on the ministry's website yesterday.
Alemanno did not say where the Italian food authority would be based.
He has said that Italy's tradition of producing high-quality food makes Parma the ideal host city for the new European Union food safety agency, which will employ scientists to assess food safety risks along the food chain, including animal feed.
A decision on the site for the European Food Authority could be taken at a summit of EU leaders in Belgium in November or December, a senior EU official has said.
Helsinki, Barcelona and Lille have also applied to host the EU agency, which will also support the European Commission in the event of a major food safety crisis in the 15-nation bloc.
Alemanno said that Italy's agri-food industry depended on high quality standards for produce, and he backed new EU rules on the labelling and traceability of foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Under the new requirements announced in July, all foods and animal feed derived from GMOs have to be labelled and, in the case of processed foods, records have to be kept throughout the production chain allowing the GMO to be traced.
"We want to give more room for research and controls so that consumers know exactly what they eat," Alemanno said.