Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-07-Speech-1-177"
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"en.20080707.19.1-177"2
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"Mr President, I should like to talk to the Commissioner about one of the reports on food additives, and in particularly about the food colourings known as azo dyes. I am extremely pleased that we have some very good news: from now on they will have to be labelled on all food products. I want to congratulate Åsa Westlund, who has worked very hard to get this. When she started out on this work, nobody was suggesting there could be such progress, and yet we have got progress. It is a real improvement on the status quo. But I do not think it goes far enough.
You will be aware I am sure of the study by Southampton University last Autumn which shows a link between the behaviour of children who are fed a cocktail of different sweets and soft drinks and azo dyes. It is a very serious study; it was published in
. It is peer-reviewed and it is so serious that the United Kingdom, through its Standards Agency, has now called for a ban on these colourings in food products. Many companies in Europe are voting with their feet and are actually phasing them out voluntarily.
The single market is failing on this issue already. It is quite well known that these products have no dietary value, and there are natural flavourings available. I saw something in one of our newspapers asking: ‘Do we need an end to Smarties?’ (these are very brightly coloured sweets), but there are perfectly good natural alternatives to those colourings available. We do not need to have these colourings.
We welcome what has happened today but hope you will keep working with the European Food Safety Authority to speed up its work on reviewing these substances. I do not think people in Europe want these artificial colourings, and I think we should be looking more at what people need to have in their food, not what companies want to add. I hope you will push the EFSA to work more quickly and to get a resolution to this problem."@en1
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