Evaluating impact on safety of food and feed

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Scope

Does the option affect the safety of food and feed?[1]

Definition

The production and consumption of food is central to any society, and has economic, social and, in many cases, environmental consequences. Nutrition is the most direct way of affecting human health, and in order to to insure European consumers´ health, high food safety standards need to be kept and protected. Questions of food and feed security affect broad areas such as animal nutrition, the use of biotechnologiy, nutrition labelling, novel food, as well as chemical and biological safety. While developing food policy, health protection has to be prioritised, anyhow the above issues need to be taken into account as well. Additionally several parts of the food chain are affected by state and quality of the environment, in particular the state of ecosystems, which indicates which important role environmental policy does play in ensuring safe food for European consumers.[1]

The European Union's food policy is based on the overal goal of high food safety standards, which serve to protect and promote consumer´s health. The Commission's guiding principle, primarily set out in its White Paper on Food Safety, is to apply an integrated approach, called "from farm to table" and covering all sectors of the food chain, including feed production, primary production, food processing, storage, transport and retail sale. Targets are the establishment of an independent European Food Authority, the improvement and actualisation of food safety legislation, the development of a Community framework for the development and operation of national control systems in cooperation with the Member States, helpful and clear consumer's information including ideas of labelling and a more active role for the Community in international bodies concerned with food products.[1]

Result

Indicators:

There are no Eurostat Structural Indicators directly related to this key question.

The following Eurostat Sustainable Development Indicators are relevant to address the key question:

Through catches outside biological limits fish species get endangered and the number of survivable species decreases. Therefore the following Sustainable Development Indicator might provide a hint on this subject:

Additional Links:

European Environment Agency Indicators

Grassland is an important factor of feed safety and thereby affects food safety as well:

EEA Biodiversity Indicators

See also

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 JRC: IA TOOLS. Supporting inpact assessment in the European Commission. [1]

This text is for information only and is not designed to interpret or replace any reference documents. The text is partially adapted from:

The European Commission´s White Paper on Food Safety