At the Agriculture Council on Monday 16 December in Brussels, the ministers of Spain, France, Greece, Italy and Portugal will call for a change in European legislation on the labelling of the origin of agricultural and food products, “to better meet consumer expectations”.
In a note, the Ministers of Agriculture of these countries hope that improving the labelling of the origin of products will be one of the main areas of work of the European Commission’s ‘from fork to fork’ strategy. They advocate strengthening European legislation on labelling the origin of foodstuffs and food ingredients and await proposals from the Commission in this area.
Although European regulations already make country of origin labelling mandatory for certain specific product categories, “it remains incomplete in this respect”, according to these countries. Thus, Regulation 2018/775 on the indication of the origin of the primary ingredient in foodstuffs, which will be applicable from 1 April 2020, represents “progress, but will not allow mandatory and complete information to be provided to consumers on the ingredients of a foodstuff”, these countries argue.
Temporary provisions are in place in several EU countries, including France, requiring the indication of the origin of ingredients in certain processed products.
A citizens’ initiative in favour of mandatory declaration of origin for all food products has collected nearly 1.3 million signatures from citizens in seven Member States. Link to the note: http://bit.ly/36xGRvW (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)