At the end of the World War II, security of food supply constituted the European Community’s priority. Within a fairly short space of time it was able to put measures in place to ensure this objective, through the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy. Since then, the need for high-quality, safe and healthy food has constantly increased.

Today, in a context where the European public’s tolerance of food risks – unlike other risks connected with daily life – is close to zero, Europeans expect all possible measures to be taken in order to ensure that foods sold in the EU do not present any dangers to consumers.
Legislative bodies and all of the actors in the food chain are therefore presented with considerable challenges, and all the more so as a real revolution has occurred over the last fifty years in the way in which foods are produced, processed and marketed, as well as in consumer behaviour. Today’s food chain has practically nothing in common with that of the 1950s. Food production is becoming industrialised, new technologies are suddenly emerging in the food chain and trade is becoming globalised, allowing the appearance of new foods and new competition, as well as new anxieties. Modes of consumption are changing, to the point that nutritional imbalances are becoming a cause of concern for consumers and for the public authorities.

Since the creation of the Common Agricultural Policy and at the time of the creation of the single market on 1st January 1993, veterinary surgeons have played a predominant role in the construction of this European model of safe and healthy food, with regard to foods of animal origin. However, the regular occurrence of crises since that time – from “mad-cow disease” to the dioxin crisis and from importations of adulterated cooking oil to the recent contamination of germinated seed by E. Coli bacteria – may give the impression of recurring problems. These numerous potential dangers, which are variously biological or chemical in nature, and are often accompanied by uncertainty as to the real level of risk for consumers – as in the case of pesticides, environmental contaminants and genetically modified organisms – are so many sources of worry for consumers.

The BSE crisis constituted a real turning point in public food safety policies. The announcement by the British government, in March 1996, of a possible link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in animals and the new variant of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans gave rise to a profound and lasting crisis of confidence amongst consumers. The Amsterdam Treaty, which came into force on 1st May 1999, drew the lessons from this crisis by prioritising the objective of a high level of protection of human health still further, raising it to the level of a transverse requirement for all of the EU’s common policies. It also vested the European Parliament with a full role as co-decision-maker in all measures directly aimed at the protection of public health.

On the basis of the White Paper of 2000, European legislation has been thoroughly revised in order, in particular, to place science at the heart of public decision-making. The European Commission has been reorganised and a new legislative and regulatory paradigm put in place for the conquest of the Grail of a food supply that is completely safe in all circumstances. The result is a wide-ranging and sound body of European law which, in combination with the whole of the supplementary provisions covering the entire animal and human food chain “from the farm to the fork”, makes it possible to ensure that European consumers can place their trust in food safety standards which are amongst the highest in the world.

Nevertheless, recurring crises repeatedly call the model into question. In the end, do these alarms simply serve to reinforce the effectiveness of the system, or do they rather reveal its weaknesses and limitations?
These questions provide the context in which the various contributors to this issue of The European Files share their reflections on the most effective ways of dealing with present and future challenges.

Laurent Ulmann
Editor-in-chief, The European Files