EFFL - European Food and Feed Law Review

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The search returned 2 results.

James Lawless

European Food and Feed Law Review, Volume 7 (2012), Issue 5, Page 220 - 231

The so-called Hygiene Package1 is the EU’s legal linchpin for ensuring the production of safe food within and outside the Union. This legislation aims to cover a vast array of food products and processes; from basic, commonsensical rules on the storage of fresh fruit and vegetables to the complex standards for animal slaughter and hygienic carcass handling. In addition, the Hygiene Package applies to a broad variety of different food business operators – from major international companies with huge production output and regulatory resources to farming families producing solely for local markets. Of course, all food, irrespective of the commodity concerned or the nature of its production, must achieve the same level of safety. However, a concern over the threat of excessive and disproportionate hygiene standards for small businesses, including, but not limited to, those in the artisanal and traditional food sectors, is also to be found in the Hygiene Package’s provisions. So-called ‘flexibilities’ exist throughout the Hygiene Package to guard against this risk of over-regulation. These flexibilities cannot and do not represent carte blanche exemptions from the Hygiene Package and must continue to satisfy the overall principles of food risk regulation as set down in the EU’s General Food Law.2 This article examines the extent to which the flexibilities foreseen by the Hygiene Package really enable a proportionately tailored regulatory regime for small-scale food business operators.

James Lawless, Klaus Wiedemann

European Food and Feed Law Review, Volume 6 (2011), Issue 2, Page 96 - 103

The regulation of meat safety has occupied much of the European Union’s legislative, policy and political time since the earliest days of European integration. Among the first pieces of Community legislation in the 1960s were Directive 64/432 and Directive 64/433 setting harmonised standards for intra-Community trade in bovine and porcine animals and meat. Controversy has also marked the regulation of these commodities over almost five decades: from the infamous Franco-Italian dispute over veterinary inspections in the 1976 Simmenthal1 case, to the control of hormones in the 1980s, through to the (mis)management of BSE and the Belgian meat dioxin contamination in the 1990s. Meeting these challenges has required the EU to manage complex issues of food risk, complicated further by contentious issues of national regulatory sovereignty, international trade obligations and consumer concerns. In addition, the primary risks to humans of various zoonoses have evolved over time; from the post-war concern with bovine tuberculosis and trichinella to the modern problems of E.coli and campylobacter contamination of meat. This article will examine some elements in the evolution of meat safety risks and meat safety risk regulation in order to assess how (and why) these two phenomena have or have not “kept pace” with one another over time.

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