The recent “horse-meat scandal” that shocked Europe and the world has led to the European Commission proposing new measures to tighten the rules on the health of animals and plants entering the EU food chain to protect the European population from an incident such as the horse meat scandal from occurring again.
The new measures it is hoped will prevent the spread of communicable animal based diseases and foreign pests to European crops. The rules will force authorities in member states to comply with EQ food safety legislation and implement necessary controls, including ant-fraud checks and strong financial penalties on food operators who commit fraud or fail to comply with the law.
Although the EU has some of the highest food safety standards, they believe there is room for improvement which the new controls will hopefully accomplish.
The rules will also include a prevention-based principle governing animal health in an attempt to avert the mass culling of potentially-infected animals, such as in recent cases involving avian and swine flu.
Watch the following video which explains what happened:
http://www.euractiv.com/health/brussels-calls-stronger-food-saf-news-519561
