Legislation on traceability

Food safety is not one of the European Community policies listed in the EC Treaty. This does not mean, however, that the Community institutions have lost interest in the issue - quite the contrary. However, it would be an exaggeration to state, as some authors do, that from the outset, the Community has been concerned with ensuring food safety. Certainly, one of the objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy (cf. art. 33 of the EC Treaty, formerly art. 39) was to create a situation of food self-sufficiency, but health safety, understood as it is at present, was not a concern of the Ministers of Agriculture, the regulations requiring only that the product marketed be "wholesome, fair and merchantable".

From the mid-1960s onwards, the Community has been working to manage food risk – for the sake of pure harmonization, and to avoid obstacles to the circulation of...