Brussels, 19/04/2011 (Agence Europe) - To help consumers make a completely informed choice of dietary balance, the parliamentary health and food safety committee wants maximum transparency and clarification of information for consumers in all food labelling. In their declaration in the second reading on the draft regulation to introduce clearer, understandable and more informative food labelling, MEPs went even further (57 votes for, 4 against, 1 abstention) than the common Council position adopted on 21 February (EUROPE 10320), particularly with regard to mandatory food labelling, to the great displeasure of Renate Sommer (EPP, Germany), who saw it as an impractical excess that could potentially discriminate against certain products and could harm SMEs. She said that this would be the main difficulty in the trialogue negotiations beginning on 10 May. She informed the press: “We need to put a stop to the different and incoherent national provisions and provide ourselves with standard European rules. I hope we will reach an agreement by June”.
MEPs voted for the mandatory mention of the place where the meat, fish, poultry, milk product or other fresh produce with a single ingredient comes from (the Council accepted the labelling of origin only for meat, pork, lamb and poultry). They also make the mention of the country of origin mandatory for all these products used as ingredients in processed products, as well as the date of the first freezing of meat, poultry and non-processed frozen fish. Meat labelling should indicate the place of birth, rearing and slaughter of the animal in question. Animals that have their throats cut also have to be notified as such. The same goes for reconstituted meat, which will also need to be labelled for consumers.
Readable print guaranteeing clear labelling has been defined: 1.2 mm when the size of the packing allows. On packages that are smaller than 80 cm2, this will be 0.9 mm. The committee did not want all important information to be included with the list of ingredients on the front of the packaging, to the great disappointment of the Social Democrats and Greens/EFA. Energy values (in kilo calories), quantity of saturated fats, carbohydrates, sugars, proteins, salt - all have to be included in a legible way on the back of the packaging and expressed per 100g or per 100ml and also per portion. They can also be accompanied by guideline daily amounts. Committee members also add trans fat acids, which, according to Glenis Willmott (S&D), the shadow rapporteur, have already been banned because they are linked to Alzheimers and sterility. The mention of allergens, initially planned for inclusion among additives, should appear close to the list of ingredients but not on the front of the packaging.
Alcoholic drinks will be excluded from the field of application but the committee did not want to speak on “Alco pops” yet because they consider that it would be better to define these drinks first, which is up to the Commission. Exemptions in the future regulation include gift packaging, food that is not pre-packed and used for immediate consumption and micro-companies producing handcrafted food products. (A.N./transl.fl)