Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-09-Speech-3-418"
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"en.20030409.10.3-418"2
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". – Mr President, first of all I would like to thank the European Parliament for its collaboration on this proposal. In particular I would like to pay tribute to the rapporteur, Mrs Anne Ferreira, for her work on this dossier. She has given broad support to the proposal of the Commission. She has agreed to the proposed authorisation of two new sweeteners and to the reduction of the use of a further, already authorised sweetener.
As regards the protection of the consumer, I would like to reassure honourable Members that proposals for authorisation of food additives under EU legislation are done on the basis of a risk assessment undertaken by the Scientific Committee on Food and, in the future, by the European Food Safety Authority. If the result of this risk assessment is favourable, the Commission proposes the use of an additive after verifying that all the criteria for authorisation of a food additive are met. The proposed conditions of use are based on the technological need and on intake data gathered by the Member States. This process of risk analysis is fully independent from what is done in other countries. The Commission is satisfied that this process is carried out in a transparent and independent manner in the EU.
Amendment 5 addresses the review of the conditions of use for the two newly proposed sweeteners. This amendment duplicates requirements that already exist in food additives legislation. In fact, the review of authorised food additives is required in the overall framework directive and in the three specific directives on the various classes of additives. This is done from time to time. The framework directive requires food additives to be re-evaluated whenever necessary. Article 8 of the Sweeteners Directive obliges Member States to monitor regularly the consumption of sweeteners. This monitoring has to provide data on intake both by adults and by children. Therefore, the Commission is in a position to identify whether the intake of specific additives would exceed safe levels both in adults and children.
Whenever necessary, the Commission will propose restrictions to currently authorised use patterns, in particular to ensure that intake by children is safe. Furthermore, it is not realistic to set a three-year deadline for this exercise. On the contrary, to gather data on the two sweeteners before they are fully established on the market runs the risk that their intake would be underestimated. Therefore, because this amendment duplicates existing requirements and because the deadline is not realistic, the Commission cannot accept Amendment 5.
Two further amendments (Amendments 2 and 3) would refuse comitology for the decision as to whether or not a substance should be considered as a sweetener according to Directive 94/35/EC. This is a purely technical decision necessary to bring certain substances under the scope of the directive that would otherwise escape from the strict rules set out for sweeteners and instead simply be considered as food ingredients. Therefore, the Commission cannot accept Amendments 2 and 3.
A series of amendments has been tabled concerning the Commission proposal to clarify the meaning of the wording of the food category 'fine bakery wares' for special nutritional uses. The intention behind the Commission proposal was to render more homogeneous the interpretation of this food category by Member States. However, so far, the Council has not been able to agree on the wording proposed by the Commission, nor on any alternative wording. Therefore, the Commission can agree to the deletion of the proposal on fine bakery wares (Amendment 7).
However, the alternative wordings proposed in Amendments 12 and 13 are not clear and would render the implementation of the directive difficult. Therefore, the Commission cannot accept Amendments 12 and 13, although I note Mr Bowis' point on Amendment 12 which may change the view of the Commission. I will have to give reconsideration to that issue.
Finally, two amendments have been tabled that aim to ban cyclamates and sucralose. Both substances have been evaluated by the Scientific Committee on Food and have been assigned an acceptable daily intake. That means that these substances are safe if their consumption stays below the acceptable daily intake. To ensure this, the Commission has estimated the consumption of sucralose and introduced measures to reduce the consumption of cyclamate.
Parliament proposes to reinforce these measures and the Commission can support that. But as the Commission considers these sweeteners to be fundamentally safe, there are no reasons to deprive consumers and the food industry of their use. The Commission cannot therefore accept Amendments 9, 10 and 11.
In summary, the Commission can accept Amendments 1, 6, 7 and 8, but cannot accept Amendments 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13.
In the latter case, the rapporteur even wished to go further than the Commission’s proposal – by seeking to reduce the level of cyclamates in both soft drinks and juice or milk-based drinks to 250 milligrams per litre (Amendments 1 and 8). The Commission can accept these amendments. I have been asked to give more details in relation to that and I am happy to do so.
I agree with Mr Bowis in saying that scientific advice must not be second-guessed. However, in accepting their advice on an acceptable daily intake, it is the job of the risk managers – the Commission, the Council and Parliament – to set the maximum permitted doses in particular foodstuffs. This is always a difficult task. However, the Commission, in proposing to accept a lower limit of 250 milligrams per litre in soft drinks, did not act on a whim of any individual official. This was done after careful consideration of the science and intake studies and after hearing the views of Member States and Parliament. Let me clarify the following.
A clear distinction must be made between the acceptable daily intake of a food additive which is purely based on science and the maximum permitted use level of a food additive in a given foodstuff which is determined taking into account a series of criteria laid down in the legislation. There is no scientific mechanism to translate an acceptable daily intake into a maximum use level. In the present case the acceptable daily intake for cyclamates has been lowered from 11 to 7 milligrams per kilogram of body weight by the Scientific Committee on Food. Soft drinks contribute to a large extent to the intake of sweeteners and are also consumed by children. Furthermore, Member States indicated that the acceptable daily intake for cyclamates might be exceeded in their country. For these reasons the Commission can support the further reduction of the levels of cyclamates.
However, the Parliament has introduced several additional amendments to the Commission proposal.
Amendment 4 calls for the re-evaluation of the authorisation of two sweeteners – aspartame and stevioside. Furthermore, the amendment would require the Commission to present a report on the process of authorisation of aspartame by the US Food and Drugs Administration. The Commission cannot accept this amendment for the following reasons.
At the request of the Commission, aspartame has been re-evaluated by the Scientific Committee on Food in collaboration with the British and French Food Safety Authorities. To this end, the scientists have reviewed all the scientific literature published since the last opinion on aspartame – amounting to around 150 articles. The resulting opinion, adopted as recently as December of last year, fully reconfirmed the safety of aspartame and that the intake of this sweetener remains well below the acceptable daily intake. Therefore, the Commission does not consider it justifiable to proceed with a further re-evaluation of this sweetener, nor to restrict its conditions of use.
The leaves of Stevia and the sweetener extracted from this plant, stevioside, have also been thoroughly examined by the Scientific Committee on Food. The Committee has serious doubts about the safety of stevioside and did not consider it as acceptable for use in food. Therefore, the Commission has never proposed this sweetener for authorisation. To date, no new scientific data justifying a re-evaluation of stevioside have been presented to the Commission.
Turning to the request to examine how aspartame was approved in the United States, it is not the competence of the Commission to enquire how an authorisation has been granted in a third country."@en1
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