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The CAFIA's international relationships in 2000 were mainly characterised by more activities; this was particularly enabled by increasing the number of personnel, and changing the CAFIA's organisational structure.

The CAFIA's foreign activities were predominantly focused on communication with the European Commission, mainly regarding the following two aspects: the accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union and the extensive changes in the European food legislation being prepared by the European Commission. The European Commission, or rather its Directorate General for consumer protection, DG SANCO, published the so-called White Paper on Food Safety at the beginning of last year. It summarised the basic conception of the development of food legislation in the European Union in the next four years and proposed the establishment of the European Food Authority as an institution which will, at the EU level, collect the newest scientific findings in the sphere of food safety and communicate with consumers. An important part of the CAFIA's international activities was its comment on the White Paper and on the European Food Authority's operation.

In relation to the preparation of the Czech Republic to the accession to the European Union, the CAFIA continued to harmonise its official food-inspection principles with EU principles and started systematic work on comparing the legal regulations of the Czech Republic with European Community legislation. In this sphere, the CAFIA was involved in the development of a database information system which would enable a transparent search and determination of the extent of compatibility of Czech law with European law. This information system would also enable work on achieving full compatibility of the Czech legal regulations, according to which the CAFIA operates, with the relevant standards of EC law.

The CAFIA actively participated in several meetings of important international organisations: the meeting of the Codex Alimentarius FAO/WHO Commission and the meeting of the FLEP and its work groups. The CAFIA is a sponsor, on behalf of the Czech Republic, of cooperation with three committees of the Codex Alimentarius Commission; in 2000, it participated in their meetings and presented its comments regarding common documents prepared and directives drafted. The committees in question are the Codex Committee for Food Labelling; the Codex Committee on Methods of Analysis and Sampling ; and the Codex Committee for Food Import and Export Inspection and Certification Systems.

In March 2000, the CAFIA organised the sixteenth meeting of the FLEP, which was held in Prague; this was the first time that a country not a member of the European Union served as host. At this meeting, the Czech Republic was accepted as a full member of the FLEP. The meeting showed the need to establish a new work group that would deal with the issue of mycotoxin occurrence in foodstuffs. The CAFIA applied for participation in this work group and took part in its first meeting at the end of September.

An important event for the development of international activities was the signing a contract for educational projects for CAFIA employees and for supply of computing and telecommunication equipment, both paid for from the PHARE programme.

The CAFIA also applied to participate in the QUID Thematic Network international projects, the primary goal of which is to establish a European network of laboratories which apply Directive 79/112/EEC on labelling and presenting products in practice. Another project is GEMS/Foodstuffs - the programme for food contamination control and determination (a joint project of the FAO, UNEP, and WHO), the purpose of which is to collect information on food contamination and dangers to human health from various countries of the world, as source material for a complete synthesis. Since 1996, the development of the new structure of this data into an electronic form has been carried out.

The CAFIA's representatives participated in the Conference on Food Safety, held every year in Brussels; in 2000, this conference took place in the light of reactions to the European Commission's White Paper. Also very important in this respect was the Conference on Product Safety, which was not only a reaction to changes in European Food Legislation but also a reaction to changes in the consumer-protection concept, enforced by the DG SANCO. The CAFIA's activities as well as its developmental conception were presented at the conference called 'CR Foodstuffs in the Extended EU Market', arranged for by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic in Brussels at the end of the year.

The CAFIA's participation in the seminar called 'Food Safety Above All', held in the Netherlands, was extremely beneficial; its objective was to familiarize the participants from associated countries with the food-inspection system in the Netherlands and with the method of communication with the European Union. At the seminar on food safety held in Poland, the CAFIA's approach to risk evaluation was presented; at the practical seminar in Italy, both theoretical and practical findings were acquired in the area of analytic methods used for detecting the presence of GMOs in food; at the subsequent seminar in Brussels, the CAFIA's results were already presented in the sphere of GMOs detection. The CAFIA's inspectors participated in the international seminar on quality control of fresh fruit and vegetables. As part of the training course held in the USA, the issue of inspection and analyses of irradiated food was discussed.

Foreign residential courses in which CAFIA employees participated were not only focused on inspection and laboratory methods and on sampling methods, but also on getting to know the organisational structure of the partnership organisations and their methods of communication with the European Commission.