UK food regulator issues update on food and feed law
products from the EU's ten new member states should be treated as
coming from within the bloc.
The Food Standards Agency yesterday said that due to the wording of the EU's food and feed regulation, suppliers from the new member states would normally have to be treated as third country imports.
This means imports from the 10 countries would have faced a stricter safety standard than if they were treated as EU members.
Current EU regulations defines the terms "import" and "introduction" with reference to a list of EU territories. The regulation lists only the 15 member states at the time it was adopted in April 2004. As the new member states are not included, legally, feed and food from them entering the rest of the EU should be dealt with as third country imports, the FSA stated.
"The European Commission is aware of this issue and believes that the Treaty of Accession effectively makes the necessary provision for new member states without the need to amend regulation 882/2004 itself," the FSA stated. "However, it will not be possible for the Commission to confirm this until it has definitive legal advice which it is currently awaiting."
In the meantime, the FSA says enforcement authorities should that non-meat feed and food entering the UK from the new member states should be considered as intra-community trade rather than as third country imports.
A previous guidance update in December from the FSA explained that changes to the Official Feed and Food Controls (England) Regulations 2005 were required, mainly due to the adoption of a number of new European Commission regulations that included transitional measures.
The measures extend the period that official laboratories have in meeting the required European standards on testing food and feed products for contamination.
The measures also specify the requirements relating to the publication of lists of approved food business establishments. Food companies are required to source their supplies only from approved companies.
The UK's Food Standards Agency said yesterday that the necessary revisions have now been made to UK law and came into force on 11 January. The revised regulations also reflect changes in other domestic legislation.
