Food traceability focus for UK watchdog
watchdog will focus on the relationship between food ingredients
and the final food label, at an upcoming seminar between
stakeholders next month.
The Food Standards Agency, through its 'food authenticity and labelling research programme', will host the event to discuss whether approaches to current traceability systems taken are effective.
Slotting into the European framework regulation EC/178/2002 laid down in January 2002, new rules (Articles 14 to 20 of the regulation) enforced in January set out general provisions for imposing the traceability of food and feed.
While food firms have always been under the legal duty to ensure that all food in the chain is safe, the new rules now formally require that they notify the local authorities should a food or feed withdrawal from the market arise.
The number of food-linked alerts in the European Union leapt by over forty per cent in 2003 on the previous year, with the majority sourced in the 'old' member states.
As today, the national authorities will feed information about the withdrawals to the European alert hub, the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF).
In place since 1979 the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), broken down into ' alerts' and 'information' notifications, provides national authorities with a tool to swap information on national measures taken to ensure food safety, namely foods withdrawn from the food chain.
'Alerts' require immediate action due to the risk of food contamination to the consumer, whereas for 'information' notifications the food product has yet to reach other member markets in the RASSF network.
A recent report from RASFF reveals the number of 'information exchanges' - alerts and information combined - had risen from 3024 in 2002 to 4286 in 2003. The new traceability rules in force since January are likely to boost these figures.
