8.4.2 The General Food Law

Regulation 178/2002 (General Food Law) lays down the general principles and procedures in matters of food safety and established the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).1 Important elements are the precautionary and traceability principles that aim to ensure the consumer's safety, and to build up product knowledge. Article 7(1) introduces the precautionary principle:

The Commission conducts the process of evaluating the safety of a food product mainly relying on scientific advice. If a particular ingredient or food additive is suspected of not being completely safe, the Commission can act to limit possible risks and does not have to await proof concerning such risk.2

In comparison, despite the fact that REACH is based on the precautionary principle,3 the facts suggest otherwise. For example, chemicals that are under suspicion of having adverse effects to consumers or the environment, but concerning which little research has been carried out, or no political consensus has been reached to ban them, continue to be present in consumer products. Also, REACH fails to oblige producers to substitute SVHCs for safer options.4 Another example concerns the ongoing debate as to whether nanomaterials pose serious risks to human health. Due to their small volumes they generally fall outside the REACH scope, hence no data concerning their use or effect are being collected and communicated in the supply chain.5 Although both REACH and the General Food Law aim to protect human health, very different approaches have been chosen to realise this.

The landmark aspect of the General Food Law is the establishment of the traceability of food at all stages of production, processing and distribution.6 Food business operators shall put systems and procedures in place which allow them to retrace where food ingredients are sourced from and they are held to make this information available, upon demand, to the competent authorities. Each operator should therefore be able to identify its suppliers, and should also be capable of indicating to which business it has supplied its products. This is known as the 'one-step-backward, one-step-forward' approach.7 This trace-ability system throughout the supply chain is not only important with a view to ensuring consumer safety. It can also aid a company in complying with CSR standards: "traceability of food products will help isolate industry response to problems, thus enabling the industry to more rapidly and cost effectively control disease and reduce impacts from tampering".8

The traceability requirement is also present in REACH as REACH maintains a registration system for chemical substances, which system requires the traceability of chemicals and the identification of chemical substances within consumer goods. Although both REACH and the General Food Law enhance traceability in the supply chain, the traceability does not concern CSR aspects related to the production process. One might argue that it could prove too burdensome for industries to provide information on societal aspects to consumers. However, the counter-argument would be to state that when a consumer is willing to pay EUR 2,000 for a new TV set, he should also be entitled to receive full information about the history of the product and its properties.