It is something already very well known, but it is always better to repeat it to avoid psychosis also on food: the coronavirus cannot be transmitted by food; food is not contagious; food is neither source nor route of transmission. "All the health authorities tell us: food can neither be a source nor a route of transmission of the coronavirus - reiterated Paolo De Castro, S&D coordinator in the Agriculture Committee of the European Parliament - we must work to defend the integrity of the European single market and prohibit any scientifically unjustified measure that restricts the free movement of goods, and in particular of our excellent agri-food products".
This position, explains De Castro, “is reaffirmed in the document that we presented to the EU Executive, signed by all the dem European parliamentarians, on health measures and the mandatory interventions on the economic front that Europe must urgently implement. Let's say that on the coronavirus, Europe must change, it must act now. In short, Brussels must shake itself off and it hasn't done so until now”.
“On food – says the PD MEP – scientific certainties come to us primarily from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which expressly stated that 'there is no evidence of the transmission of the virus through food, as it has already happened for Sars and Mers, the acute respiratory syndromes and the Middle East'. Not only. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), has confirmed that transmission of the virus occurs only from person to person".
After the safety of citizens, now more than ever we must think about safeguarding our trade, in particular the most perishable agri-food products and food excellence, which, as the Minister of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies, Teresa Bellanova says, "are an element strategy for the competitiveness and global positioning of Made in Italy”.
We trust, concludes De Castro, "in the mandate that the European Commission has just received from the Heads of State and Government to further intensify the European response to Covid-19, and in the commitment it has made to use all the tools at its disposal to make sure that the European economy weathers this crisis”.
