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Doc. 8457
24 June 1999
Dioxin crisis and food safety
Opinion 1
Committee on Science and Technology
Rapporteur: Mr Michael ASCIAK, Malta, Group of the European People's Party
Introduction
The report of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development rightly alerts us to the problem of food safety in an increasingly international food industry. The recent dioxin scandal is only one of many examples of a risk to consumers health that have been introduced in the agro-food chain by components used in food or drink production or by defaults in the production process itself. In all these cases a better quality control would have allowed an early identification and elimination of any contamination of the products.
Your Rapporteur is therefore arguing in this opinion that the food industry, in its broadest sense including animal feed must improve total quality management procedures. This could be encouraged and helped by the creation at the European level of a Food and Drug Administration Agency similar to the FDA in the US and using the positive experience of the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA) by including it in the new pan-European structure. The proposed creation or strengthening of National Food Safety Agencies could be a part of such a new structure which could also facilitate international co-operation, co-ordination and inspections in this field.
The case of dioxin
Dioxins have been a part of our environment for millions of years. They are mainly produced by the burning of different materials, but also when chlorine is used in bleaching paper or by the industrial production of organic chlorinated chemicals. Dioxins are soluble in oils and fats. Of the 200 or so different types, 12 are particularly toxic. Of these, the TCDD, or 2, 6, 7, 8 tetrachlordibenzo-para-dioxin, is the most toxic and has been given a toxicity equivalence (TE) of 1.
Dioxins can cause skin-rash, liver-function damages, and also cancer. The most difficultly degradable ones can be destroyed by combustion at temperatures above 1000° C which was practised to eliminate dioxin from the soil following the Seveso accident in 1976. If not eliminated, the difficultly degradable dioxins will build up in the food chain.
The US food and drug administration has set up a limit for tolerable daily intake of 0.06 pikogram (pg = 10–12) TE/kg body weight and day whereas the US Environmental Agency has established the daily tolerable intake at 0.006 pg TE/kg. The corresponding limit established by WHO is 1-4 pg TE/kg. Only prolonged exposures to dioxin usually causes serious health problems.
Food poisoning and quality control
In general, food and drinking water cause far less health problems than in the past. In part due to the internationalisation of the food industry any incident may have a potentially wider impact. Tight control of the quality of food and drinks is therefore needed. The recent dioxin accident, but also many other cases of food poisoning, point to a need for a new effort to improve quality control at all levels of the food production chain. This must be done at enterprise-level as well as by public authorities. Enterprises should increasingly carry full liability for any damage caused by them. The public authorities should also carry the responsibility for rapidly and correctly informing the public and the media about any incident and any risk linked to it.
In particular, there is a need to develop methods that can allow a rapid determination of the presence and level of toxic substances in food. The development and testing of such methods should be entrusted to specialised scientific research teams. Successful methods should be subject to European or international standardisation, thus allowing their wide use.
The principle of Total Quality Management should be applied in all food companies. The proposals made in the main report (Doc. 8453) are most welcome in this connection. However, as this issue is increasingly becoming an international issue, public structures set up to assure quality control would gain by having similar structure. This would facilitate co-operation and comparability of results and quality procedures.
A question which has not been raised in this report but that will be devoted increased attention in the future is the status of genetically modified food products. This is a question, which also deserves careful studies and quality management procedures.
The media
Given the importance of the media in informing the public regarding an incidence of food poisoning, it is very important that the media will be immediately informed by the scientific and official authority(ies). There have been several cases where misinformation has caused undue anxiety.
Conclusion
Your Rapporteur fully supports the draft recommendation of the main report (Doc. 8453). However, three amendments are proposed with a view to enhancing international quality control co-operation for food as well as for drugs.
1. Insert, after paragraph 8 ii. three new paragraphs as follows:
"iii. to strengthen scientific capacities for the identification of toxic contamination in food.
iv. to develop or improve methods for their rapid detection and for the establishment of their concentration:
v. to seek pan-European or international standardisation for successful methods to allow their wide use;"
2. Insert after paragraph 8 v. in the draft recommendation a new paragraph as follows:
vi. to work for the inclusion of these agencies as well as those responsible for the quality control of drugs in a pan-European structure similar to the US Food and Drug Administration".
3. Insert after paragraph 10 i. a new paragraph as follows:
"ii. To seek to structure this work and that regarding the quality control of drugs into a single pan-European Food and Drug Administration Agency".
-oOo-
Committee for report: Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (Doc. 8453)
Committee for opinion: Committee on Science and Technology
Reference to committee: Request for urgent procedure and Reference No. 2403 of 21 June 1999
Opinion approved by the committee on 24 June 1999