Love it or hate it, if you are involved with the EU fishery sector, you are affected by EU policies and legislation. The Common Fisheries Policy is here to stay, and food safety regulations are becoming tougher as every year passes.

Market interventions, fleet adjustments, quotas, conservation measures, fisheries agreements all have a major impact on supplies and the market. And the change almost on a weekly basis. If you are a manager and decision maker (whether in the public or commercial sector), you need to keep up to date and have at hand detailed information on what is going on at the European level.

The EU also sets hygiene and HACCP standards for EU suppliers of fishery products. Third country suppliers (i.e. non-EU) must also put in place health controls which are "at least equivalent" to those laid down in EU Directives. Food safety requirements are changing all the time; veterinary drug residue controls, new limits for heavy metals in fishery products were introduced recently, traceability requirements will come into force in 2005. If you trade in fishery products, you need to keep up to date with changes like these.

You can spend hours each week on the Web tracking the Official Journal and all of the other sites. Or you can let a respected consultancy firm in this field do the job for you. MegaPesca´s FishFiles Professional service can keep you 100% up to date on all of these issues.

For an annual (and fully-inclusive) fee of just US$149, we send subscribers an email at the start of each month with lists of all the new documents issued by the EU during the previous 30 days. For convenience these are divided into two parts- Common Fisheries Policy and Fish Hygiene. Each entry has a brief note on the contents, written by a leading expert in the field, indicating the relevance and content. Check if there is anything of interest. A click on the hyperlink takes you to our password-protected Web page. Simply enter your email address and password to access the document.

Most documents are in Adobe Acrobat format for you to print or to keep on your hard disk for reference. Typical content will include:

Council Directives, Council Regulations and Commission Decision published on the Official Journal of the European Communities. We select items which are of most relevance to EU fisheries policy and the international fish trade, with a special focus on fisheries management and food safety issues.

Reports published by DG Fisheries and DG SANCO on technical issues, including reports of studies and inspection missions to third countries.

Other reports, white and green papers containing policy proposals which are likely to affect supplies and markets for fisheries products.

Selected items from the minutes of the relevant standing committees and questions in the EU Parliament of the European Communities.

See a typical example of the Common Fisheries Policy information that FishFiles Professional subscribers receive each month.

See a typical example of the Food Hygiene information that FishFiles Professional subscribers receive each month.

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