A snowballing scandal over a toxic insecticide found in eggs in 15 EU countries is exposing alarming weaknesses in the mechanisms for protecting Europeans from cross-border food poisoning cases.

Food safety is one of the EU’s core competencies, but the widening panic over fipronil in eggs during the past two weeks underscores how difficult it is for Brussels to police its own laws if member countries fail to flag concerns quickly or keep data secret — and bicker with their neighbors over who is responsible.

The European Commission’s struggle to enforce its own rules, and its weakness in relation to powerful member countries and national industries, was apparent in the 2015 Volkswagen crisis, which highlighted its difficulty in overseeing the implementation of its own emissions standards.

The egg scandal, which appears to have spread from Belgium and the Netherlands, is following that familiar trajectory.

Brussels-based lawyer Jens Karsten argues that the EU’s underlying food safety legislation is sound, but difficult to monitor. “This is about enforcement,” he said. “There’s definitely something that went wrong and there must be consequences.”

Communications breakdown

Belgium first received information about dangerous levels of fipronil, which can cause liver damage in humans, in eggs on June 2. Soon after, it launched a criminal investigation into the owner of a Flemish company called Poultry Vision, which put the illegal chemical into a detergent for killing chicken mites.

However, Belgium waited until July 20 to inform its European partners of the health scare via the EU’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF). Under EU law, a country must “immediately notify the [European] Commission under the rapid alert system” if it has any information relating to the existence of a “serious direct or indirect risk to human health deriving from food or feed.”

Germany was furious about Belgium’s poor communication, but Belgian authorities offered several excuses for their failure to issue an immediate alert.

First, Belgium argued that its ability to communicate was restricted by the investigation into the Flemish detergent maker. It also suggested that it didn’t sound the alarm on June 2 because the fipronil test was made privately by a farm rather than as part of an official probe. Finally, Belgium said it was unable to carry out further investigations without information from the Netherlands .

The Netherlands, meanwhile, knew about the presence of fipronil in its eggs on June 15 and also failed to issue a warning to the EU or its partners. Poultry Vision’s coop-cleaning liquid was largely sold to farms by a Dutch business called ChickFriend.

The breakdown in communication escalated into a diplomatic incident Wednesday when Belgium’s Agriculture Minister Denis Ducarme blamed the Netherlands for its inaction, saying Dutch authorities repeatedly failed to respond to questions and appeals for information about which farms were affected.

Ducarme also accused the Dutch of covering up the fipronil scare in eggs since November 2016 — a charge the Netherlands vigorously denied.

One of the more concerning parts of the inquiry is that it remains unclear how long the owner of Poultry Vision used fipronil. A Belgian Green party lawmaker published an invoice showing the owner bought large volumes of fipronil from Romania in May 2016, but there is no evidence it was to be used on chickens.

Lessons to learn

European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Vytenis Andriukaitis, who is trying to cool the Belgian-Dutch feud, called a meeting on September 26 on how to fix cross-border cooperation.

“The European way of working should apply — we sit down around the table and we discuss how to reinforce our cooperation,” he said.

By Thursday, there were signs that the main member countries at the heart of the scandal were patching things up.

Belgium’s Ducarme contacted his German, French and Dutch counterparts Christian Schmidt, Stéphane Travert and Martijn van Dam and the ministers agreed to strengthen ties between their national food safety agencies and designate liaison officials to improve communication channels.

A spokesperson for the European Commission denied the EU system itself wasn’t up to the task of responding to such health crises. The EU’s Parma-based European Food Safety Authority has not been involved because it relies on national bodies to carry out spot checks.

“The European Union has the most advanced and sophisticated systems to protect our citizens and our consumers,” said Commission spokesperson Daniel Rosario. “There are obviously lessons to draw from this and this is obviously what we are going to do.”

But Geoff Tansey, curator of the Food Systems Academy, an open-source resource tool, said there was a risk in leaving national authorities to issue the notifications, as there could be a conflict of interest.

National authorities, he said, might shy away from acting quickly due to the strategic interests of key agricultural sectors. “One assumes that national governments are thinking about what effect this is having on the national industry,” he said.

Graham Dutfield, professor of international governance at the U.K.’s University of Leeds, also stressed that there could be need for greater centralized control.

“We should reflect on the fact there have been shortcuts taken and illegal chemicals used. Perhaps there are grounds for additional oversight and more powers given to regulators across Europe,” he said. “That’s a question absolutely worth asking and looking into. What is actually broken here?”

Click Here: IQOS White