Horses for (meat) courses: database of national food-safety laws and regulations

A resource for anyone who, given the rapidly expanding horse-meat scandal, is working on food safety issues right now and needs to consult the relevant legislation. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has compiled a database called FAOLEX, which lists food safety laws and regulations from just about everywhere.

FAOLEX is a comprehensive and up-to-date computerized legislative database, one of the world’s largest electronic collection of national laws and regulations on food, agriculture and renewable natural resources.

Users of FAOLEX have direct access to the abstracts and indexing information about each text, as well as to the full text of most legislation contained in the database.

FAOLEX doesn’t provide translated versions, but if you’re looking for the original text then it’s a handy reference tool. There’s also a FAOLEX help page.

By Marian Dougan