2. Manufacturers will make use of this assessment to evaluate alternative design solutions and the achieved environmental performance of the product against benchmarks.

The Competent Bodies are recommended to take into account the implementation of recognised environmental management schemes, such as EMAS or ISO 14001, and Environmental Product Declarations when assessing applications and monitoring compliance with the criteria (note: it is not required to implement these declarations and management schemes).

Manufacturers will make use of this assessment to evaluate alternative design solutions and the achieved environmental performance of the product against benchmarks.

The directive does not introduce directly binding requirements for specific products, but does define conditions and criteria for setting requirements regarding environmentally relevant product characteristics such as energy or water consumption, waste generation, extension of lifetime and allows them to be improved quickly and efficiently.

Under the LIFE programmes Estonia, for example, implemented a project on Introduction and Implementation of Life Cycle Assessment Methodology: Effects of Oil Shale Electricity on the Environmental Performance of Products (2003).

The paper also makes a useful summary of the state of knowledge in the key areas. The following is a list of areas considered by the group as worthy of research : - research aimed at establishing whether or not BSE has been transmitted to man; - working on the hypothesis that BSE may be transmissible to man, a number of suggestions are put forward aimed at establishing a risk assessment such as work on determining whether multiple dosing is cumulative and an estimation of the utilisation of offal in different human food products prior to the ban and the consumption of those products by individual age groups and socio ...[+++]-economic criteria; - is there infectivity in BSE-infected cattle derived products other than SBO (Specified Bovine Offal) ?; - further research to establish the precise reason or route for maternal transmission of BSE in some cases; - establish if it is possible that BSE originated as a (rare) spontaneous event in cattle and that the BSE agent is different from the scrapie agent; - can BSE be transmitted orally to pigs ?; - research into the development of diagnostic techniques for BSE and CJD; - establish the efficiency of BSE inactivation procedures used in the food and pharmaceutical industry; - certain areas are suggested for research into developing therapeutic treatment for victims of the CJD disease and also into developing a test which would indicate those people susceptible to the disease; - predictive research is also proposed as it has been shown that CJD occurs rarely in individuals with certain genes.