This week, the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety debated the amendment proposal of the MEPs on food labelling. The responsible parliamentary rapporteur MEP Renate Sommer (European People’s Party) made it clear: mandatory country-of-origin labelling should only apply to meat products. It would not be required for other products such as fruit, vegetables or food consisting of several ingredients.

With regard to unpacked food products, Sommer only mentioned the specification of allergens. She did not expand on other information. She commented, however, that the Member States should no longer be in charge of this issue. Apart from that, alcohol shall not be part of the scope of the Directive.

Addressing the issue of nutritional values, the MEP came up with a rather strange proposal: labels should now specify sodium. Stating the salt content would not be sufficient. Sommer came clearly out against the request of several MEPs, to use the colours green, yellow or red to highlight nutritional values such as fat, sugar or salt, depending on their amount in the product.

In the subsequent discussion, the representatives of the Socialist Group and the United European Left, Glenis Willmott and Kartika Liotard pointed out that they were in favour of the so-called traffic light labelling of nutritional contents. Both these two MEPs and the Greens criticised that the rapporteur voiced her opposition against country-of-origin labelling (apart from meat products as mentioned above). They demanded this information for all food products. If the producers were uncertain, where their products or ingredients were coming from, they could write “Origin unknown” said MEP Carl Schlyter of the Greens. Peter Liese of the European People’s Party commented, however, that it would be far too costly for small to medium food producers to display the different origins of their products. Nor would the traffic light system be a good solution.

Unfortunately one has to expect that business interests will prevail over consumer wishes. The Committee will vote on this issue on 16th March.

Weiterführende Information:

Commission proposal on food labelling