News

On 30/03/2021, the Commission launched feedback on statistics on pesticides – updated list of active substances. The consultation is open until 27/04/2021, available here.

On 31/03/2021, the Commission launched feedback on a review of promotion policy inside and outside the EU for agricultural and food products. The initiative is part of the Farm to Fork strategy and aims to strengthen the contribution of promotion policy to sustainable production and consumption through the transition to a plant-based diet (more information here). The consultation is open until 23/06/2021, available here.

The EU regulation of 24/04/2019, which sets a limit for the content of trans-fatty acids in foodstuffs at 2 g per 100 g of fat, entered into force on 01/04/2021. From that date, foods more than this limit may not be placed on the EU market in the case of trans-fatty acids other than those naturally occurring in animal fats. The regulation for EU Member States is harmonized in line with the WHO call for the removal of industrial trans-fatty acids from the global food chain by 2023.
More information is available here, here, and here.

The new regulation on transparency in food production entered into force on 27/03/2021 and serves to enhance the transparency of risk assessments of pesticides, genetically modified foods, additives, and flavourings. All applications for approval of new chemicals used in agriculture and food will now be published in the European Food Safety Authority's (EFSA) online database.
More information is available here.

The German Federal Audit Office has sharply criticized the parties' plans of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture (BMEL) to introduce national voluntary animal welfare labelling. Labelling is one of the priorities of the Federal Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner. The auditors from the Audit Office criticize specially the absence of a feasibility study of costs, including a comparison of costs with the benefits of the proposed labelling. The auditors therefore recommended that the introduction of voluntary labelling should not be continued on a provisional basis. The German process is also being followed by the European Commission, which was called upon to introduce a voluntary harmonized pan-European animal welfare label through approved Council conclusions in December 2020.
More information is available here and here.

A coalition of 162 NGOs, mostly environmental organizations, sent a letter to the European Commission on 30/04/2021, disagreeing with the Commission's plan to deregulate new breeding techniques. These techniques are now governed by the same rules as GMOs, against which many agricultural organizations and some members of the European Parliament's Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development are protesting. As part of the Farm to Fork strategy, the European Commission stated that it would be appropriate to consider whether new breeding techniques should continue to fall under the strict legislative framework for GMOs. However, the coalition does not agree, according to which organisms obtained using new techniques must continue to be regulated by existing GMO standards in the EU. The discussion is currently leading to the labelling of GMO foods. According to a recent survey, up to 86% of respondents supported the introduction of labelling of foods containing genetically modified crops as "GMO foods". Almost 81% of respondents also supported the "genetically modified" label of animal products when animals were fed GMO feed.
More information is available here.