| Food Safety/Health/Consumer Affairs |
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"As Commissioner for Health, my portfolio covers three broad areas: public health, feed and food safety and animal health and welfare. Many challenges lie ahead. We need, for example to improve the legal certainty on patients' rights in cross-border health care, to contribute to reducing organ donation shortages, to help combat rare disease in the field of public health and to implement a comprehensive strategy on animal health."
– Androulla Vassiliou "Europeans undertake increasingly complex contractual transactions across borders. Accordingly, the rules need to be modernised to empower consumer choice, to simplify compliance requirements and to facilitate effective enforcement. This is how I intend to develop EU Consumer policy, in continuity with what has been done for more than thirty years at the European Commission, but also in keeping with the swift pace of evolution of consumers themselves."
– Meglena Kuneva Over the years the European Union has established laws to ensure the safety of food and other products and protect the health of people, animals and plants. Food Safety EU policy ensures that consumers can confidently enjoy access to an affordable and safe variety of food. Experience shows that the entire food chain must be addressed if safety is to be guaranteed. EU laws cover how farmers produce food, how that food is processed and sold, how it can be traced through the supply chain, as well as the type of information provided on the label. The EU also regulates the safety of food imported into the EU, including requirements on traceability. The EU and the US both have high food safety standards, although US consumers may recognize that different approaches in some areas, e.g., mandatory labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or banning the use of hormones as growth promoters in the EU, may sometimes give rise to disputes. Public Health In the European Union, the provision of healthcare lies within the jurisdiction of individual Member States. However, as cross-border health threats arise in an expanding Union and as EU populations become more mobile, the EU plays a more and more critical role in promoting and coordinating healthcare solutions for all the Union’s citizens, concentrating its focus on disease prevention, overall preparedness and rapid response to potential dangers to human health. The EU has been quickly adapting to address new challenges. Lessons from threats such as SARS led to the creation of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and, later, to coordinated European plans to respond to threats such as a new flu pandemic. EU policies have also been evolving to address the longer-term issue of promoting healthier living. To that end, the EU monitors Union-wide health data and develops and carries out public education campaigns. The EU is also responsible for coordinating the flow of aid from Member States with its own disaster relief and civil protection programs directed at those in need across the globe. The Union acted quickly to minimize public health threats in the aftermath of the South Asian tsunami, the earthquake in Pakistan and Hurricane Katrina on the US Gulf Coast. The EU and the United States share many public health challenges, such as preventing pandemic outbreaks; stemming tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS worldwide; reducing the threat of bioterrorism; and dealing with issues such as obesity, rising healthcare costs, the public health ramifications of aging populations, as well as tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse. The EU and the US work closely together to prevent, prepare for and eventually respond to the healthcare needs and public health crises facing their own citizens as well as the larger global community. Consumer Protection Consumer protection comprises making certain that all consumer products (not just food) and services sold in the EU are safe; ensuring that consumers' rights are properly protected; guaranteeing that consumers have the information they need to make an informed choice and are not misled. This applies whether consumers are shopping in their local supermarket, while traveling around the EU or on a website based in another EU Member State. In the area of transatlantic relations, the EU has encouraged and assisted the work of the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD)—securing a continued and close dialogue between consumer organizations on both continents and enabling consumers to have a voice affording a counterweight to that of the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD). European Commission Delegation, Washington, DC, Staff USEFUL Links: European Commission Websites
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 05 May 2009 ) |