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Conflicting Notifications in the EU's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF): ‘Destabilization’ in Food Risk Communication?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

James Lawless*
Affiliation:
UCD School of Law, UCD Institute of Food and Health, Dublin, Ireland

Abstract

Case T-212/06, Bowland Dairy Products Ltd v. Commission

The Commission, as co-ordinator of the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), is not entitled to refuse the circulation of a supplementary notification made by a Member State to the system, regardless of its own reservations about the content of that notification. This is in accordance with the non-hierarchical nature of RASFF as a form of risk information exchange envisaged in Article 50 of Regulation 178/2002. However, as the Commission itself is also a member of this network it may legitimately make notifications to the system which directly conflict with notifications made by Member States (author's headnote).

Type
Case Notes
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 Vos has identified ‘destabilization’ as a feature of the experimentalist architecture of EU food safety regulation; see Vos, Ellen, “Responding to Catastrophe: Towards a New Architecture for EU Food Safety Regulation?”, in Sabel, Charles F. and Zeitlin, Jonathan (eds), Experimentalist Governance in the European Union, (Oxford: OUP 2010), pp. 151176.Google Scholar

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3 The role of the FVO in overseeing the official controls undertaken by Member States is detailed in Regulation 882/2004 on official controls performed to ensure the verification of compliance with feed and food law, animal health and animal welfare rules, OJ 2004 L 191/1.

4 BBC News, Dairy's curd banned from Europe, available on the Internet at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lancashire/5413598.stm>.

5 RASFF Notification 2006.0375

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7 The FSA was content that batches of cheese made with milk previously identified as being unfit for human consumption had been destroyed and that improvements had been made to the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) procedures, quality controls and specifications for milk intake.

8 Regulation 178/2002 laying down the general principles and requirements of food law, establishing the European Food Safety Authority and laying down procedures in matters of food safety, OJ 2002 L 31/1.

9 General Food Law, Art. 50(3).

10 Ibid., Art. 50(2).

11 Bowland Dairy Products Ltd v. Commission, para. 41.

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