EU says safe to eat during Games, despite concerns
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Europeans travelling to the Beijing Olympics have nothing to fear from Chinese food, despite an upsurge in food safety warnings in the Asian powerhouse, the European Union’s health chief said on Wednesday.
“There is no need for Europeans to take any extra or special measures, other than the ones they would normally take when travelling to a country outside the European Union,” EU Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou told Reuters.
“There are problems, but there is no major danger from eating food during the Olympics.”
She was speaking after a report published on Wednesday on the EU’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) highlighted concerns over the quality safety of Chinese imports, notably fish products, dried fruit and vegetables.
“The number of notifications on Chinese products has increased significantly over the years and the share of notifications has never been as high,” the report said.
A whole chapter of the report was dedicated to Chinese food safety with 12 percent of the warnings recorded by the EU executive in 2007 coming from China.
“China has made a great improvement, but more certainly needs to be done and we must keep up the pressure on them,” Vassiliou said.
“We will be sending another inspection team to Beijing in October and this will focus on fish products as we have had an upsurge in particular with these products.”
Brussels has called on Beijing to set up a similar alert system to the RASFF over rising concerns about food safety in the country.
By Darren Ennis
BRUSSELS (Reuters)
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