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Food safety is our biggest area of activity. Experience shows that the whole "food chain" has to be adressed to be serious about safety. The EU has laws covering how farmers produce food (including what chemicals they use when growing plants and what they feed their animals), how food is processed, how it is sold and what sort of information is provided on the labelling. The EU also has laws regulating the safety of food imported into the EU, laws to prevent the spread of animal and plant diseases in the EU and laws on the humane treatment of farm animals.

We have about 250 officials based in Brussels who work to keep the EU's laws on food safety up to date and a further 100 or so officials based in Grange, Ireland whose job it is to verify that EU countries - and countries exporting food to the EU - observe the rules. We also have other Brussels-based officials who liaise with international organisations and the EU's trading partners on food and farming issues, and who run the EU's "rapid alert" system on food safety issues.


  to the Food safety website