Dear Member of the European Parliament,
You are currently reviewing the “Food and Feed Safety Omnibus”, which amends ten food and feed safety legal acts in a single package, and you will soon have the opportunity to cast a vote. This Omnibus is not a mere technical tidy-up: it suggests important changes to regulations that have major implications for consumers, farmers, and the environment. For the reasons outlined below, I ask you to oppose the European Commission proposal.
Under the guise of simplification, I am concerned that essential protections are undermined, in breach of legal obligations that are spelled out in EU Treaties. I ask you to object to those changes and stand for consumer protection as well as good administration.
I am particularly concerned about:
- The overall lack of transparency and consultation about the proposals: No meaningful public debate has been organised, and no impact assessment has been carried out. This is violating the EU’s own rules of good administration.
- The weakening of existing controls on pesticides by making unlimited EU authorisations of pesticides the rule for most substances and weakening the requirements to take the latest scientific evidence into account in their assessments. This will put farmers, consumers, and the environment at risk and breaches EU legal obligations to ensure a high level of health and environmental protection under the EU Treaties. This will also create more work for national authorities, who will still have to assess pesticide-based products in their countries, based on reduced and outdated scientific information.
- The increased consumer exposure to pesticides residues by removing periodic reviews. Also, even when residue limits are tightened over time, food products placed on the market produced under the previous higher limits could still be marketed — keeping consumers exposed to higher levels of pesticides residues.
- The reduced safeguards against potential bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) outbreaks (also known as mad cow disease) by relaxing the rules and introducing more flexibility in the definition of tissues at risk, while early active surveillance is key to contain BSE.
- The reduced scrutiny of imports when more controls are needed by burdening authorities to allow the release of parts of shipments during controls, while they are already understaffed to do their job properly and need more capacities to carry out more thorough controls. Think about recent contamination of baby milk.
- The unlawful nature of the proposals: a high level of protection of health and the environment is one of the primary objectives of the EU Treaties. Yet, by weakening existing safeguards on e.g. pesticides, pesticides residues, import controls... the proposals are not in line with the EU’s own legal obligations.
The European Ombudsman has already found maladministration in the Commission’s preparation of several “urgent” Omnibus proposals due to procedural shortcomings. It is therefore essential that this file receives the highest level of scrutiny.
I count on your oversight to defend the high level of protection of health and the environment required in the EU Treaties and that consumers deserve. Please oppose the European Commission proposal.
Yours sincerely,
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