"FASTER PROJECT" Food and Safety towards enlarged relationships for a new Europe

Phare Small Projects Programme - Budget Line B7-030

The project regards quality in agro-alimentary products, control methods for food hygiene and safety, and the veterinary controls on animals, both for enforcing the internal market acquis, helping free circulation of goods, and for helping the implementation of veterinary, phytosanitary and food safety acquis, through three seminars involving organisations dealing with food safety in EU countries, new Member States and candidate countries. The aim is to ensure consumer healthy in the enlarged market, considering that the enlargement process has brought to the extension of this market, and to the creation of new frontiers, with the need to harmonize laws, quality level and food safety standards, veterinary controls, and to enforce the activity of Border Inspection Posts.

The main aim of the project's actions is to create a net among entities coming from EU and Phare countries, in order to know which are the national laws about food safety in candidate countries, to confront with EU countries and to put in evidence the importance of EU policies on food safety, in order to:

• help the harmonization of rules on Consumer protection, whose importance was recognized as priority by the Copenhagen European Council in 1993;
• strengthen and harmonize disease surveillance, outbreak investigations, data reporting systems and diagnostic methods on food safety and quality;
• increase the compatibility of food safety systems by implementing equivalence, transparency, and harmonization of regulations and control across Europe
• enhance cooperation between the sectors of health and food production, agriculture and fisheries;
• examine commercial food safety and nutrition claims on labels to ensure that consumers receive accurate and not misleading information.

The first meeting in the framework of Phare Project FASTER, which took place on the 18th of March 2005, in the Corte Benedettina, via Romea 34, Legnaro, Sala Montecchi, had the main aim to get the participants to meet each other, in order to help the creation of a stable network and the exchange of experience and know how, and to deepen the relationships between the entities involved in the project (Research Institutes, training and consultancy bodies, Chambers of Commerce, from Italy, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary). Each partner had the possibility to talk about the activities carried out by the entity he represented, and the situation of his country, with particular reference to the situation of animal traceability
Furthermore during this first meeting the Team Leader and the partners discussed about the papers of of the 2nd meeting, about Food Safety. The second meeting will take place on the 17th of June.

Participants in the 1st meeting:

Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie (Italia) - www.izsve.it
Veneto Agricoltura - CSQA (Italia) - www.venetoagricoltura.org
Irecoop Veneto (Italia) - www.irecoop.veneto.it
Italian Chamber of Commerce in (Bulgaria) - www.camcomit.bg
National Veterinary Medical Service (Bulgaria) - www.mzgar.government.bg/MZ_eng/NacSlujbi/NVMS/nvms.htm
Directorate for Agriculture and Rural Development of Iasi County (Romania) - www.dadr.ro
State Veterinary Administration of the (Czech Republic) - www.svscr.cz
Agricultural University in Warsaw, Dep. Of Food Hygiene (Poland) - www.sggw.pl
General Veterinary Inspectorate (Poland) - www.wetgiw.gov.pl
State Veterinary and Food Institute (Slovak Republic)- www.vup.sk
Hungarian Veterinary Service (Hungary)- www.fvm.hu

Meetings envisaged in the project:

1) 18th of March 2005 - "Animal traceability"
2) 17th of June 2005 - "European Food Safety: the Roadmap"
3) 23rd of September 2005- "Final meeting open to the public"