Food and Health - A European Perspective

In Europe at present there is unprecedented interest in food and health. This ranges from the concern of individual consumers in relation to healthy eating ti that of government ministers who are faced with the enormous cost of health care and who are increasingly realising that the answer may be in preventive medicine. In Europe, the prominent position of the common agricultural policy (CAP) has resulted in a major policy input at production agriculture level; however, few, if any, corresponding policies have been applied to the downstream food areas and this represents a major deficiency in development/control of the European food system. The present study is therefore both timely and topical. It had three components (Table 1) and was based on major reviews of the scientific, trade and popular literature. To this foundation was added the distilled views of international experts who were contacted personally or who took part in a project-steering workshop held in Dublin in March 1986. The extensive findings and recommendations of the project have been published and are summarised in the following sections.