Food-borne diseases are increasing in Europe and a rapid alert system needs to be extended across the continent and beyond to protect consumers, delegates at a United Nations conference in Budapest said this week.
On the rise are diseases from micro-organisms such as salmonella, and cases of foods contaminated by hazardous chemicals such as dioxin, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Health Organisation (WHO) said.
Western Europe has been rocked by scares in recent years, including mad cow disease, foot-and-mouth disease and dioxin in feed, undermining consumers' confidence in what they eat.
Dutch Agriculture Minister Laurens Jan Brinkhorst backed a suggestion from the FAO for a rapid alert system for food and animal feed, now used in the European Union, to be extended to central and eastern Europe and beyond to cut risks of disease.
He also urged harmonisation of food safety controls.
"Diseases spread partly because the checks and balances on the way food is being produced are becoming international," Brinkhorst commented.
"We import a lot of our diseases. We cannot limit ourselves to opening markets - we must also harmonise the veterinary and sanitary standards," he said.
"I support the idea launched here by the FAO that the rapid alert system should go beyond the enlarged European Union," he added, in reference to plans for some eastern and central European nations to join the EU.
Under the "rapid alert system", national authorities in the EU must immediately inform the European Commission, the bloc's executive, of safety risks in food and animal feed. The Commission then notifies other member states.
Hartwig de Haen, FAO's assistant director-general, said a rapid alert system should extend well beyond the EU.
"A rapid alert system should cover all countries that trade with each other," he said.
"Since products are traded beyond the European Union, the alert system should also be expanded. Expanding it to central and eastern Europe would be a good first step. It shouldn't be limited to the European region," he told Reuters in an interview.
De Haen said better monitoring systems were revealing increasing numbers of cases of food-borne illness.
"The number of people who suffer from food-borne diseases or even die from them is still far too high," he said.
According to the WHO, food-borne diseases are a widespread and growing public health problem, both in developed and developing countries.
The global incidence of food-borne disease is hard to estimate, but it has been reported that in 2000, 2.1 million people died from diarrhoeal diseases, WHO said.
In industrialised countries, up to 30 per cent of people suffer from food-borne diseases each year.
De Haen urged the conference, which brings together food safety experts from across Europe, to tighten food controls along the chain "from farm to fork."