Translation of "test alimentaire " (French → English) :

The purpose of coordinated testing plan was two-fold: firstly, controls were to be carried out, mainly at retail level, of food destined for the end consumer and marketed as containing beef, to detect the presence of unlabelled horsemeat and secondly, to test for the possible presence of bute in horsemeat.

In addition, Member States reported another 7,951 tests for the presence of horsemeat DNA performed by food business operators (producers, processors and distributors).

The number of tests that were carried out to detect the extent of the mislabelling varied between 10-150 samples depending on the size of the EU country and on consumption habits.

in the pursuit of its mission to ‘ensure the safety of the food chain and the quality of foods with a view to protecting human, animal and plant health’, the AFSCA is acting not as a private operator but as a public authority and that, consequently, it is not in receipt of State aid; there is no economic bias in favour of economic operators covered by Agency activities financed by fees and that, consequently, they are not in receipt of aid; as regards the financing of general random checks by fixed contributions, the operators receive no specific economic advantage and, consequently, no aid, given the compulsory nature of the checks and the fact that they cannot be invoiced directly to an individual company as they aim to ensure ...[+++] that the entire food chain is monitored (they benefit all operators and aim to protect health and food safety in Belgium); using contributions to finance part of the cost of BSE tests and other checks linked directly to the production and placing on the market of certain products is a form of State aid which complies with the Guidelines on State aids linked to BSE tests; the actual financing mechanism contains no specific provisions which would be contrary to other provisions of the Treaty, and the parameters for distributing the sum of contributions among operators in the various sectors are objective and fair criteria which do not lead to discriminatory treatment as regards the origin of the products.

The tests provided for in subparagraphs (a) and (b) need not be carried out for foodstuffs originating in an establishment that is subject to a control programme recognised, in respect of the food of animal origin concerned and in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 12(2), as equivalent to that approved for Sweden and Finland.

(d)The tests provided for in subparagraphs (a) and (b) need not be carried out for foodstuffs originating in an establishment that is subject to a control programme recognised, in respect of the food of animal origin concerned and in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 12(2), as equivalent to that approved for Sweden and Finland.