CIAA’s policy mainly aims at regulating approaches to quality schemes, novel foods and ingredients, additives and enzymes, additives and flavourings, enzymes, nutrition and health claims, vitamins and minerals additives, labeling and obesity.
The European Commission is currently reviewing the ETS directive, and plans to table a proposal for revised legislation in 2007.
The CIAA has criticized the scheme for being a heavy administrative burden on small plants, which is often disproportionate to the low level of their actual emissions.
The importance of the scheme for the food and drink sector is reflected in the fact that, for instance, in France small percentage of all ETS installations are food and drink sites. CIAA AISBL, the Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries of the European Union, is an international association registered under Belgian law. Its mission is to represent the interests of the food and drink industry at European and international level.
CIAA said the food industry has accessed the functioning of the system and has concluded that procedures must be harmonized among regulators issuing alerts to avoid different interpretations of the law.
CIAA finds it important to evaluate the validity, accuracy and necessity of notifications carefully and to make the outside reader aware of existing national legislation that can trigger results. The association stated to use the system as an effective communication tool, emphasizing on the fact that information is important, and it is also necessary in order to avoid misleading or contradictory warnings as some warnings are not food safety related.
The CIAA also called for the food operator concerned to be informed of the problem as part of the procedure as early as possible. The operator must have the right to provide further information, such as test results, in order to add to the evaluation.
The CIAA’s membership is made up of 24 national federations, including two observers. There are 32 EU sector associations, 21 major food and drink companies grouped together in a liaison committee.
Via: dairyreporter
