Source:  John Strak, MEATINGPLACE, 6/28/11


The European Parliament's negotiating team has received the Council's green light for the provisional agreement reached last week on new EU legislation on food labelling.

According to the European Commission, the draft legislation aims to modernise, simplify and clarify food labelling within the EU. It would harmonize existing rules on information that is compulsory on all labels, such as list of ingredients, "best before" or "use by" dates, specific conditions of use, and add a requirement to list key nutritional information.

The new deal extends the country of origin labelling (COOL) requirements that already exist for beef, honey, olive oil and fresh fruit and vegetables to pigmeat, sheep and goats’ meat, and poultry.

Although the members of the European Parliament (MEPs) wanted to extend country of origin labelling to more products (such as milk and dairy products and other single-ingredient products or meat when used as an ingredient), this was rejected by the Council.

It was agreed that before extending country of origin labelling to other categories of food, the European Commission will have to conduct impact assessments to assess the feasibility and potential costs of such labelling requirements. Meat consisting of combined meat parts must be labelled "formed meat."

"The deal is a milestone in the EU`s food legislation that will benefit both the consumer and food business operators", commented Parliament's rapporteur Renate Sommer. "In future, European citizens will find much more information on the packages than before."

MEPs did not insist that meat from slaughter without stunning (in accordance with certain religious traditions), must be labelled as such, but agreed that this should be considered in the context of forthcoming discussion on the animal welfare strategy.

Parliament is expected to vote on the agreement at its July plenary session.

For more stories, go to www.meatingplace.com.