Foodlaw-Reading
Dr David Jukes, The University of Reading, UK
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Council Minutes, 17 July 2017
The following is an extract from the Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting on the 17-18 July 2017:
At the request of the Belgian delegation ministers discussed the impact on the internal market of national rules introducing mandatory labelling of the country of origin of food, and in particular for milk and foodstuffs containing milk or meat as an ingredient. The Belgian delegation took the opportunity to invite the Commission to assess the impact of the different national rules on the internal market after one year from the implementation of the first national decree.
In the debate that followed some ministers warned against mandatory origin labelling which would, in their opinion, not only be costly and burdensome but also detrimental to the internal market and free movement of goods. Several supported the Belgian request to have an impact assessment on the national rules introducing mandatory labelling of the country of origin of food. Others put emphasis on transparency, the right of the consumer to be correctly informed and the growing societal demand to know the origin of food, in order to support the idea of an EU-wide mandatory labelling of origin.
