Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health

This section details outlines the work of the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health

Known as “Scofka”, the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health (SCFCAH) is responsible for the entire food supply chain, ranging from animal health issues on the farm to the product that arrives on the consumer's table.

SCFCAH has eight sections

  • Animal Health and Animal Welfare
  • Animal Nutrition, Biological Safety of the Food Chain
  • Toxicological Safety of the Food Chain, Controls and Import Conditions
  • General Food Law
  • GM Food and Feed and Environmental Risk
  • Phytopharmaceuticals

The SCFCAH procedure is used to adopt implementing legislation, to amend the annexes of major acts or to deal with emergency situations. For example, SCFCAH is the body which would discuss and vote on action needed to address the outbreak of a notifiable disease or to restrict imports from third countries on sanitary grounds.

A decision can be adopted by SCFCAH within 24 hours where necessary.

Representatives from the 27 Member States make up SCFCAH, coming either from the national veterinary/food safety authorities or sometimes from each country’s Permanent Representation in Brussels.

Decisions are taken by Qualified Majority Voting, where Member States’ votes are weighted according to the population size. For a decision to be adopted, some 255 votes out of a possible 345 are required (74%).

As the UK has only 29 votes (the same as France, Germany and Italy), it is clear that a great deal of work must be put into building alliances with other Member States, if the UK wanted to make sure that a proposal was adopted or blocked.