From self-sufficieny to food security, Fischler explains

Food security is a top priority for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), stated Franz Fischler European Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development and Fisheries. Speaking at the World Agricultural Forum in the US this week Fischler maintained that the EU had a "fundamental obligation to guarantee the safety of food to consumers both within and outside the Union"​. He highlighted the shift in Europe's preoccupation from a need to be self sufficient in food resources after the second World War to today's desire to understand and know how a food is produced. "Food abundance resulted gradually in a different concept of food security that linked food safety and quality in the wider possible sense. After a prolonged period of sustained growth, food security had made the old CAP obsolete."​Fischler stated. He maintained that building a sustainable agriculture "will depend to a large extent not only on our ability to learn from the past, but also on our capacity to pre-empt the future."​. Fischler stressed that European concerns such as the environment, the sustained vitality of rural areas, food safety, animal welfare and other consumer concerns will be all be raised in the agricultural negotiations in the WTO. In raising these issues, he said, "it is not our [Europe's] intention to create new trade barriers"​Source: European Union