Committee of the regions calls for more food safety research
The Committee of the regions (CoR) has called for an intensification of EU research into food safety when it adopted a report by Italian member Tommaso Sodano and Austrian member Gunther Pumberger at its plenary session on 14 and 15 November. The committee is calling for a preventative, precautionary approach to replace the current crisis management approach to agriculture. Members also backed a move towards less intensive and more organic farming and encouraged the adoption of local or regional methods of agriculture production and marketing. The committee stated that food safety must be a top priority in the common agricultural policy if consumer confidence in European farming is to be restored. Mr Sodano argued that BSE might be the tip of an iceberg of wide ranging problems in agricultural production and food supply as a whole. Farming policy has been seen as making production more intensive, to the detriment of consumers and the environment, he said.