In the meantime, the Commission increased its budget for humanitarian food aid from the emergency aid reserve with €140 million and redirected money earmarked for food security to the most vulnerable populations.

An early deliverable on food security would be joint work on reinforcing the link between the EC Food Security Thematic Programme, the proposed EU Food Facility, and the African Framework for Food Security outlined in the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (Pillar 3), in particular in the field of agricultural research, food security information systems, improved food security risk management and support to regional and continental farmers' organisations.

Community policy on food security has evolved towards supporting broad-based food security strategies at national, regional and global level, limiting the use of food aid to humanitarian situations and food crises and avoiding disruptive effects on local production and markets, and needs to take into account the specific situation of countries that are structurally fragile and highly dependent on support for food security, in order to avoid a steep reduction of Community assistance to these countries.

Commissioner David Byrne said today was a "red letter" day for food safety with the entry into force of the first set of comprehensive farm-to-table food safety measures of the key new Regulation on EU food law.

Nevertheless, in order to improve food security in the developing countries and to ensure that their needs are met, food aid may be granted in justified cases to enable reserve stocks to be built up by the recipients.

Seminar objective The seminar will provide an opportunity to propose elements of strategy to be followed to address future challenges and provide ideas for the food security policy promoted by the Commission In particular, attendees will be able to: - debate points of agreement and disagreement in the major perspective studies; - compare the proposals for action that arise from the analysis of various current and future food situations in the world; - discuss the coordination of development cooperation policy between multilateral agencies in the field of food security; - formulate elements of strategy for the Commission, taking accoun ...[+++]t of coherence between sectorial policies and development cooperation policy.