A series of crises in the European Union (EU) in the latter part of the last century, including the BSE outbreak, foot and mouth disease and the dioxin food contamination scandal, focussed attention on animal feeding practices, and their impact on food safety. In an attempt to regain public trust, the EU’s White Paper on Food Safety in January 2000, addressed concerns over food safety, and included a commitment to update animal feed legislation in terms of both design and application. Amongst the legislative priorities arising out of the White Paper were controls over the use of feed additives and antibiotic growth promoters in livestock production.
Feed additives are defined as substances which are added to feed or water to improve feed utilisation, meet the nutritional needs of the animal or favourably affect the characteristics of the feed, animal products or the environmental impact of animal production. The use of additives was originally controlled by legislation introduced in 1970, but although it was amended several times it remained essentially flawed. New feed additive legislation, published in 2003, has introduced a more rigorous and streamlined approach to the authorisation of feed additives and removed many of the ‘grey areas’ that existed in the original legislation. As a result, after 2010, only additives that have been through a rigorous authorisation procedure will be permitted to be used in livestock diets, and manufacturers of additives should be gearing up now to ensure that they comply. Responsibility for evaluating additives now rests with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and companies seeking authorisation will need to provide robust scientific evidence that the additive has a positive effect on the animal and does not pose a risk to human health, animal health or the environment.
Antibiotic growth promoters have, in the past, been widely used as preventative measures to keep animals healthy, improve digestion and increase animal productivity. However, with evidence that resistance to the drugs used moves up the food chain, this has been an issue of growing concern as certain diseases in humans have become increasingly resistant to available antibiotics. The European Union had previously banned antibiotics used in human medicine from being added to animal feed, but new regulations, effective from 2006, has prohibited the routine use of any antibiotic as a growth promoter. Although this ban has had both financial and environmental implications for producers, the EU has remained firm in its argument that inexpensive food is less important than human health.
The EU is clearly committed to making European food the safest in the world. Strengthening the rules on animal feed additives and the ban on the use of antibiotics as growth promoters are major steps towards achieving the EU’s food safety strategy and encompassing the wider considerations of public health.