In announcing a move to set up a European food agency, the Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, has shown deep appreciation of the extent to which people's faith in the food they eat has been shaken in recent months. Scandals surrounding dioxin contamination of food and confirmation of the use of sewage sludge in animal feed manufacture in some member states has led to a loss of trust in governments and scientists. Both Mr Prodi and the Irish commissioner who has responsibility for food safety, Mr David Byrne, have recognised that decisive action is needed to restore consumer confidence, and that some form of independent agency is necessary. Failure to identify what form the agency will take should not be interpreted as prevarication, as the options will be outlined in Mr Byrne's White Paper on food safety in December. Given that some states have, on occasion, flatly refused to accept EU decisions relating to food, and demands from politicians for accountability, Mr Prodi has astutely avoided committing himself to a particular model. He has suggested the possibility of a body similar to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the European Medicines Evaluation Agency (EMEA) in London.
In often citing the FDA, he is not necessarily backing that model but desperately hoping that, whatever is decided, it should command the degree of consumer confidence which the US agency enjoys. He is probably also mindful of the colossal costs of running an all-powerful agency with a staff of some 10,000 people. Equally, the EMEA is effective in alerting the public about drug problems but is not perfect. It can only recommend measures and the involvement of industry in its operation is unlikely to be acceptable to those setting up a new food agency.
It can be argued that the Republic's Food Safety Authority is independent, free of industrial or political interference, and yet is held accountable. Mr Prodi, nonetheless, has correctly recognised that ensuring democratic accountability will not be easy in such a large Europe-wide body. Neither will the agency solve Europe's food safety problems at a stroke. Ensuring proper labelling of foods and traceability in the food chain will prove problematic, as GM foods have graphically shown. Some states have not fully implemented important EU legislation, even if they have to wrestle with more than one hundred directives on agricultural products and processed foods. But it is the French government's decision not to lift its ban on British beef despite EU scientific opinion suggesting no risk of BSE, which illustrates the challenge facing the agency - how to ensure that it has sufficient authority so that everyone accepts its scientific verdicts. If that is possible, Mr Prodi's wish for consumer confidence to be restored in European food will be fulfilled.