Safety first

By Paola Testori Coggi

The Better Training for Safer Food initiative was launched in 2006 under the auspices of the European Commission Directorate-General for Health and Consumers, with considerable backing from the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development. Its main purpose was and remains to provide high quality training in the areas of food and feed safety, animal health and welfare and plant health for national officials of Member States, associated and third countries involved in controls related to these fields.

While the training itself started in 2006, the roots of Better Training for Safer Food go back further, with Regulation 882/2004 on official controls that were adopted in April 2004 forming the legal basis for the initiative. Article 51 of this regulation empowered the Commission to organise training for Member State competent authority staff responsible for official controls in the fields of feed and food law, animal health and animal welfare rules as well as for third and particularly developing country participants.

As regards plant health, the legal basis for training goes back further still to Council Directive 2000/29/EC on measures against the introduction into and spread within the European Union of organisms harmful to plants or plant products.

These developments did not however happen in a vacuum. The empowerment of the Commission to organise training in the areas which Better Training for Safer Food would come to cover, came against the background of considerable activity as regards the development of European Union legislation in those areas, to the extent that by the early part of the last decade, national-level food and feed law, animal health and welfare requirements and plant health rules were almost fully harmonised within the European Union.

This went a considerable way to finalising the creation of the internal market in these fields. At the same time, this European Union-level action also made a significant contribution to raising levels of consumer protection and restoring confidence in food in Europe, which were at a particularly low ebb following crises such as the outbreak of BSE and the dioxin scare in the 1990's.

Once the Internal Market objectives had largely been achieved, the Commission felt that the next step was to ensure that existing law was correctly applied. It was quickly recognised that training of those who verify implementation of European Union law in these fields would be a key element in this.

Thus Better Training for Safer Food was set up with the objective of providing just this kind of training so as to ensure that official control staff at national level were kept up to date with relevant European Union legislative requirements and thus better able to identify non-compliance. This would in turn make a considerable contribution to making controls more efficient, objective and harmonised across the Union, thereby further making Europe's citizens safer, healthier and more confident.

Various additional positive knock-on effects from training in these areas can be identified. Foremost amongst these is the fact that harmonisation offers food businesses greater certainty of equal treatment wherever their goods are placed on the market and thus facilitates trade.

It should however, be emphasised that Better Training for Safer Food was never intended to replace training provided by European Union Member States in these fields, but to complement them. Indeed, the very same regulation which provides the legal basis for much of Better Training for Safer Food's activity also requires that Member State competent authorities ensure that their own official control staff receive appropriate training.

This is still the case today and I will stress here that Better Training for Safer Food is only intended to cover aspects where it is considered that added value will accrue from action at European Union level.

Looking beyond Europe's frontiers, it was clear from the outset that considerable benefits could also arise from providing similar training to third countries, something that was foreseen in the legal basis of Better Training for Safer Food. Given the extent of food imports into the European Union (which is after all, the world's largest food importer), the advantages for the Union itself are obvious.

For instance, such training serves to promote European standards and the European Union's legislative model at global level and also gives businesses and consumers in the Union easier access to safe products from all over the world. At the same time, if third country products fully comply with European Union standards, this cuts down on the burden of carrying out extensive import checks at the Union's borders but also puts European food businesses in an equal competitive position to their third country counterparts.

By the same token, the benefits to third and particularly developing countries are also numerous. First, increased knowledge of European Union standards amongst relevant parties within developing countries will better enable them to ensure that their food products respect these standards. This is vital in order to ease access to the European market for such products and can have positive associated effects in terms of generating economic growth and employment and combating poverty.

Second, increases in trade in safe food at global level bring about a win-win situation for all parties, be they in Europe or elsewhere and have an important role to play in fostering and strengthening trade links between the European Union and its partners, both potential and actual, around the world.

Third, in the same way as for the European Union, improved safety controls are essential in order to ensure a safe food supply for consumers in third countries thereby reducing the risk of disease outbreaks and related social and economic burdens.

Where we come from

With the aims I have just described firmly in mind, the Commission launched concrete training in 2006. The offer for that year comprised seven programmes and trained just under 1500 people.

From these relatively modest beginnings the initiative has become a real success story over the last few years. The number of programmes increased to 12 in 2007, with participation more than doubling in relation to the previous year. Similar increases have been seen over the years which have followed and it is a testament to the positive impact of Better Training for Safer Food that today it comprises programmes on around 25 different subjects and has trained upwards of 23,000 people both in the European Union and worldwide.

The scope of the training is also very broad, with European-based programmes covering such diverse subjects as veterinary and food safety checks at border inspection posts, animal welfare during transport and at slaughter, food contact materials and plant protection products. Third country training has likewise been varied in its outlook, with subjects covered ranging from European Union food standards, via highly pathogenic avian influenza control, to analysis of genetically modified organisms.

To this third-country training was added the Better Training for Safer Food in Africa programme in 2008, within which activities have taken place over the course of 2009 and 2010, in parallel to the standard Better Training for Safer Food activity. This programme comprises seven highly varied activities aimed at developing African countries' capacity to ensure that their agro-food products meet internationally recognised sanitary and phytosanitary standards.

Although the work carried out over the last two years within Better Training for Safer Food in Africa is a concrete step towards achieving these aims, further concerted action will still be needed. As we are coming to the end of this programme, we consider this a good time to reflect on the experience of the past couple of years, with a view to mapping out the best way forward.

Better Training for Safer Food represents a considerable success story for the European Commission. However, this success is not solely down to the Commission as the management of Better Training for Safer Food requires constructive engagement from European Union Member State and third country Authorities and a wide array of stakeholders.

I would like therefore to thank you all most sincerely for your commitment and support. Let's now look to the future.

It is my firm belief that this training programme must continue for a long time to come. We have received many indications to this effect from training participants, Competent Authorities and stakeholders from both European Union Member States and around the world.

However, for further improvement and possible extension of Better Training for Safer Food, many challenges lay ahead. We are conscious of this and for this reason the Commission services issued a Staff Working Document which highlights the most important of these challenges and the ways in which we believe they can be overcome.

Most of them rely on improving coordination so as to deal more effectively with certain difficult aspects such as better selection of participants, offering basic and advanced-level courses, increasing dissemination and adopting a more demand-driven approach. I would like to focus on one specific point only. That is the role played by our expert group of national contact points in the European Union Member States, candidate and European Free Trade Association countries.

These contact points channel information related to Better Training for Safer Food between the Commission, the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers and the external contractors responsible for the running of training activities on the one hand and the national authorities on the other. Regular meetings of this Group with the

Commission allows to define training needs, coordinate activities and flag up any problems, which may have been encountered during the activities.

The work of these experts has been fundamental to the smooth functioning of Better Training for Safer Food thus far and in order to successfully implement the actions laid down in the working document, their role and commitment will need to increase further still. Of course, coordination through this channel mainly concerns activities taking place in the European Union and primarily aimed at European participants. Events such as this conference also provide an ideal opportunity to obtain further input on the running of the training both in the European Union and worldwide.

This article is based on a speech made by Paola Testori Coggi at the High-Level Conference on the Better Training for Safer Food Programme.