News

On 01/09/2020, the Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Janusz Wojciechowski, warned during the Council of Agriculture Ministers against national country-of-origin labelling schemes. According to Wojciechowski, these can pose real risks to the functioning of the EU's single market. According to the Commissioner, the Commission is aware that, in the context of the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy, it will therefore explore the possibility of mandatory country-of-origin labelling for certain foods. The Commissioner said that consumers were increasingly interested in this information. Country-of-origin labelling rules already exist for fresh meat, fruit, vegetables, honey, and olive oil, and some countries have introduced mandatory country-of-origin labelling schemes for milk, dairy products, and tomato sauces. However, according to the Commissioner, these steps were not an ideal solution to social demand.

The largest European agricultural organization, Copa and Cogeca, has expressed its opposition to NutriScore, a colour nutrition labelling system for food labels. Copa and Cogeca expressed their full support for Italy, which, as an alternative nutrition labelling system, proposes a "Nutrinform battery" - system based on a powered battery symbol representing the percentage of the nutritional benefit of substances in relation to the recommended daily consumption.
More information is available here.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and EAT & Climate focus state in their new study that up to 90% countries that committed to the Paris Agreement in 2015 completely ignore the climate impacts of food systems in their national plans. According to the study, greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by an additional 12.5 Gt CO2 per year by adding food and food waste measures to national climate plans.
More information is available here and here.

More than 600,000 respondents have signed a petition in France calling for a referendum to ban intensive livestock production, fur farming, traditional hunting, and cage farming. The petition for the referendum, initiated by fifty animal welfare organizations, was also signed by 133 French politicians, with the support of 185 MEPs needed to call a referendum. However, the French Minister of Agriculture and Food, Julien Denormandie, does not consider the referendum to be the right means of leading to the required changes.
More information is available here.

Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides confirmed that Member States had supported the implementation of a pesticide impact assessment on bees based on an approach that considers the natural variability in colony size. This is one of the four possible approaches proposed by the European Commission. Under this approach, a pesticide would be considered acceptable if the size of the hive exposed to the substance remained within its natural variability. This deviation is decided by a computer simulation called BEEHAVE. NGOs argue that this approach will lead to a relaxation of the 2013 bee guidelines.