Promote healthy eating, emphasising health promoting diets, such as the Mediterranean diet or any other diet following relevant national dietary guidelines/nutrition recommendations;

Emphasises that the production of biofuels should not interfere with food production or compromise food security; believes, however, that balanced policies to promote increased European yields in feedstock crops such as wheat, maize, sugar beet and sunflowers could include provision for biofuel production, taking account of ILUC, in a way which could provide Europe’s farmers with a secure income stream, attract investment and jobs into rural areas, help address Europe’s chronic shortage of (GM-free) high-protein animal feed, make Europe less dependent on fossil fuel imports; believes that in cases of market oversupply of the agricultur ...[+++]al products referred to, the production of biofuels and bioethanol would represent a temporary outlet which would maintain sustainable purchase prices, safeguard farmers’ incomes during crises, and serve as a market stability mechanism; stresses the need to encourage the integration of uncultivated arable land which is not being used to produce food into the production of bioenergy, with a view to meeting national and European renewable energy objectives.

Article 43 of Regulation (EC) No 882/2004 provides that the Commission is to draw up guidelines on national control plans to, inter alia, promote a consistent, comprehensive and integrated approach to official controls which cover all sectors and all stages of the feed and food chain, including imports and the introduction into the Community of feed and food and which verify compliance with food and feed, animal health and animal welfare legislation (the guidelines).

The requirement in Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 whereby food business operators carrying out any stage of production, processing and distribution of food after primary production and associated operations must put in place, implement and maintain procedures based on hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) principles also permits simplification.

As a general rule, the European Community has exclusive competence for agenda items dealing with harmonisation of standards on certain agricultural products, foodstuffs, food additives, contaminants, veterinary drug, pesticides, fish and fishery products, including labelling, methods of analysis and sampling, as well as codes and guidelines of hygiene practice, insofar as the Community legislation has harmonised either completely or to a large extent the relevant fields in these areas, as well as issues of international trade to the e ...[+++]xtent that they are related to the objectives of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, notably to protecting the health of the consumers and ensuring fair practices in the food trade.

(12) In order to ensure the safety of food, it is necessary to consider all aspects of the food production chain as a continuum from and including primary production and the production of animal feed up to and including sale or supply of food to the consumer because each element may have a potential impact on food safety.