The fact that the number of notifications increased by some 600 compared to the 2006 figure (6,768) does not mean that our food is less safe, argued the EU's Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou, presenting the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) annual report for 2007 on 23 July.
On the contrary, "I believe that the fact that notifications are increasing means that our system is working well and that we can feel more safe about food safety," she added, arguing that the recent incidences of dioxin contaminated mozzarella cheese in Italy and mineral oil contaminated flower oil in Ukraine "simply demonstrate how important tool RASFF is".
The increase in number of notifications was mainly due to the increase in notifications of additional information concerning official controls on the internal market or products from non-EU countries blocked at the border. The number of actual alerts increased by 27.
Vassiliou said an increased number of notifications were received concerning dioxins and mercury in fish and "most alerts [21%] were sent related to fish products," just like 2006. Fish alerts were followed by those made for meat and meat products (13%) and fruit and vegetables (12%). The most common concern for meat was its content of potentially pathogenic micro-organisms, while for fruit and vegetables it concerned the content of pesticide residues.
Other reported risks included foreign bodies such as glass fragments in yoghurt and mycotoxins.
The majority (65%) of alert notifications in 2007 related to products originating in the EU, while overall, most information notifications concerned products originating from China (352), Turkey (293) and the United States (191).
The purpose of the RASFF, established in 2002 as part of the bloc's new food safety legislation, is to provide the food and feed safety control authorities with a rapid alert system for the notification and exchange of information on a direct or indirect risk to human health deriving from food or feed.
The annual report details the origin of the notifications, the products and countries involved and the identified risks, as well as follow-up actions carried out in response to various food safety problems.
The RASFF report breaks down the overall number of notifications into alerts, information notifications and additional information notifications. The respective figures were 961, 2015 and 4339 in 2007 compared to 934, 1989 and 3845 in 2006.
