The European Commission’s Representation in France provided assurances on 14 February that the revision of marketing standards for EU agricultural products would not lead to the disappearance of ‘red labels’ or ‘poulet de Bresse’.
The poultry industry in France has expressed concerns about the Commission’s intentions to revise marketing standards.
This revision, provided for under the EU’s ‘Farm to Fork’ strategy, will take the form of an implementing act and a delegated act complementing the existing rules (a public consultation took place in 2021).
Once the EU countries’ expert group has approved the texts, they will be published (around April, if possible) for a 4-week stakeholder consultation. Then the process of adoption by the Commission will be launched.
The Common Market Organisation (CMO) Committee, comprising experts from EU countries, will vote on the implementing act.
As far as the delegated act is concerned, it is adopted by the Commission and then the EU Council and the European Parliament have two months to express their views on the text.
At this stage of the discussions at expert group level, it is not expected that new wording will need to be introduced in the regulation.
The five reserved terms (‘optional reserved terms’) that producers can use on the labelling of poultry, with precise terms of reference to be respected for each of these terms, should thus remain: ‘fed with x% of’, ‘extensive indoor (barn-reared)’, ‘free-range’, ‘traditional free range’, ‘free range - total freedom’.
However, these two acts would introduce the possibility of creating new entries related to the type of feed or indoor rearing conditions (for the time being, free-range rearing would not be affected).
These new designations would be established and controlled by the competent authorities in each Member State.
The topic will be on the agenda of the next meeting of the expert group on 22 February.
More details (in French): https://aeur.eu/f/5ea (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)