More transparency in food safety policy

The European Commission, Parliament and Council have reached an agreement which will make the authorisation of agriculture food products in the EU more transparent.

"There was room for improvement in the transparency rules of our European Food Safety Agency (EFSA). We found it and we changed the rules so that people will now have more information about which studies are used to assess risk", said Pilar Ayuso MEP who negotiated the changes on behalf of the Parliament to the existing legislation on food safety, welcoming the deal reached late yesterday.

The new legislation agreed between the Institutions follows the Citizens’ Initiative from last year regarding the transparency of scientific studies used to evaluate pesticides.

The EPP Group has always supported attempts to make EFSA more transparent but disagreed with forcing European companies to expose their business secrets in the process, making European citizens vulnerable to job losses.

"We wanted to avoid the situation where EU producers would have invested in vain and wasted time and money in developing a product later to be ‘stolen’ by those not obliged by our rules", explained Ayuso.

"With this deal, however, we are protecting European producers. No ‘ideas piracy’, which could threaten EU businesses, will be tolerated", she concluded.