South Africa looks to EFSA model for food safety?
safety standards in the wake of the UK's Sudan 1 scare.
According to reports in the country's Business Day journal, the body that represents South Africa's €25 billion consumer goods industry - the Consumer Goods Council - resolved at a meeting last month to form a unified food standards body in South Africa, similar to the European Union's.
The council aims to replace the variety of standards set by government and government-linked bodies with a single organisation, "to coordinate activities on food safety by the private sector, government, academic institutions and consumers."
Sudan 1 to IV are classified as carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and are banned under European Union rules.
But in February the discovery of sudan 1 in a Worcester sauce brand - used as both a tabletop sauce and food ingredient - made by UK manufacturer Premier Foods triggered not only the recall of over 600 processed food products on the UK supermarket shelves, but spreading as far a field as China.
A clear demonstration of the impact of the UK recall, the country's biggest, on questions of global food safety, the Business Day quotes an unnamed source in the supermarket retailing industry that says the health department, the agriculture department, the trade and industry department and the South African Bureau of Standards have different standards on food.
This makes it hard for food manufacturers, particularly those which are small, to find out which regulations to follow.
Raising more question marks, a spokesperson for the food industry says the problem is not a lack of legislation on food safety but the problem is either the complexity of the regulations or inadequate enforcement.
Europe recently established its first food safety body, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), to carry out risk assessments on food safety issues.
Parma-based EFSA uses an army of scientists based on various panels, from GMOs to contaminants, plucked from the world over to provide opinions based on risk assessments.
The job of risk manager still falls with the European Commission.
