European Council Helps Consumers Make Healthier Choices

Last week, the European Council approved a compromise text, which aimed at ensuring that food labels carry essential information in a clear and legible way, following a second-reading agreement with the European Parliament.

This means that the new regulation is now adopted. The new food labelling rules enter into force 20 days after their publication in the Official Journal of the EU, which is expected for the end of November. The vast majority of them become applicable three years after their publication.

The main objective of the new regulation is to enable consumers to make balanced and healthier dietary choices. In future, prepacked food must be labelled with the energy value and the quantities of fat, saturates, carbohydrates, protein, sugars and salt. As a general principle, the energy value and the amounts of these nutrients (which together form the 'mandatory nutrition declaration') will have to be expressed per 100g or per 100ml, but can additionally be indicated on a per-portion basis.

The new piece of legislation extends the compulsory country of origin labelling to fresh poultry meat. Currently, the indication of the country of origin is compulsory notably for fresh beef (for which a separate piece of legislation was introduced during the BSE crisis), fruits and vegetables, honey, olive oil and where the failure to do so misleads consumers. The Commission must examine within two years after the entry into force of the new regulation the possible extension of the compulsory labelling of the country of origin to meat used as an ingredient. Non-prepacked food would also be exempted from nutrition labelling, unless member states decide otherwise at national level, except for allergens, which must always be indicated.

Also in the news in the last week, US poultry firm, Pilgrim's Pride is to appeal against a recent court ruling that it should pay around 90 of its broiler growers US$26 million as a result of its attempts at price-fixing in 2008.

Despite improved production prospects, world cereal markets are likely to remain fairly tight in 2011/2012, according to a new FAO report.

And finally, recent research at Australia's Poultry CRC demonstrates that broilers consume a considerable amount of litter, which stimulates gut development, and that the amount consumed depends on the type of material.