Food Safety: Lessons from Europe
Former European health commissioner says U.S. needs mandatory animal ID program now.
Mike Wilson
Published: May 18, 2009
Lexington, Ky. - While livestock interests debate the pros and cons of a mandatory National Animal Identification System, one high-profile health official says the decision is a no-brainer.
"I think Secretary of Agriculture (Tom) Vilsack is absolutely right when he says it would be valuable to have a mandatory animal ID scheme," says David Byrne, former European Union (EU) Commissioner of Health and Consumer Protection. Byrne was in Lexington this week to receive a Medal of Honor from Alltech at the company's annual Feed Symposium.
"In a crisis, only traceability will give you the ability to have rapid response and removal of food from the marketplace within 24 hours," says Byrne.
Byrne speaks from experience. He was the key public figure in Europe when mad cow disease caused wide panic and loss of livestock markets just 10 years ago. "People became very scared," he recalls. "Beef consumption went to zero. Milk products, even chocolate bars, vanished from store shelves."
Belgium's reigning leaders were thrown out of office and ministers across Europe faced severe criticism. "Nothing concentrates the mind of a politician more than the prospect of losing an election," he says.
In the wake of this food scare Byrne helped establish the European Food Safety Authority. At that time there was nothing like the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) in Europe. In the years following the mad cow outbreak Byrne oversaw the implementation of highly significant laws governing food and feed safety which are now widely considered as setting the global standard for excellence.
"It needed to be something that the public demanded and was free of political influence and science based," Byrne says. "The group decided that traceability and labeling was important, so it installed a rapid alert system and a mandatory recall system so the public would feel protected." Here in the U.S. those are voluntary.
"A voluntary animal ID system will not work," he says. "We had to do a cost benefit analysis in Brussels and we determined one of the reasons we needed a mandatory system was the concerns over mad cow. Had we not put in mandatory identification we would not have been able to contain that disease."
A mandatory animal identification program, argues Byrne, would allow traceability so that infectious diseases can be traced back within 24 hours of when they are identified.
Permalink: Click here
Tagged: Food and Drug Administration, FDA
|