The Agriculture Ministers of Portugal and Slovenia presented, on Monday 27 January in Brussels, at the Agriculture Council of the EU, a note supported by several other countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Spain) calling for clearer origin labelling of honey blends.
The Ministers of Agriculture of these countries have therefore called for an amendment to the Honey Directive (2001/110/EC) to harmonise the rules at Community level.
In particular, Italy and Bulgaria have asked to indicate the percentage or share of honey coming from the various countries of origin of the product. Spain also asked to indicate the percentage represented by each country in honey blends. Germany also supported better labelling of honey blends. A number of countries have asked for tighter controls on honey imported from non-Member States.
The Honey Directive (2001/110/EC) imposes an obligation to label the country of origin of honey. However, in the case of blend of honeys harvested from more than one country, the honey may be appropriately labelled as a 'blend of EU honeys' or 'blend of non-EU honeys' or 'blend of EU and non-EU honeys'. The 'Farm to Fork' strategy will address this issue, the European Commission said.
Link to the document on honey labelling: http://bit.ly/2O0lNYj (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)