Foodlaw-Reading Dr David Jukes, The University of Reading, UK
..... ..... ..... ..... ..... .....

Food Law News - EU - 2018

Commission consultation, 17 July 2018

FISHERY PRODUCTS - Public consultation on EU marketing standards for fishery and aquaculture products

This is a Commission Consultation which is available from 17 July - 9 October 2018. For more full details, see the Commission page at: https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations/public-consultation-eu-marketing-standards-fishery-and-aquaculture-products_en

Objective of the consultation

This Public Consultation aims to gather input from all relevant stakeholders, including consumers. It provides the opportunity to evaluate and gather feedback on the marketing standards in the fishery and aquaculture sector as a tool to ensure supply of sustainable products to the EU market, fair competition among operators and improved profitability of the fishery sector as well as a level-playing field between EU and imported products.

Consultation ends: 9 October 2018

How to submit your response

• The online questionnaire takes about 15 minutes to complete.
• You may also submit documents, such as position papers, together with your answers. Any such documents will be taken into account when analysing the results.
• The online questionnaire is available in all official EU languages except Irish.

The questionnaire is currently available at: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/OPC_EUmarketingstandards_fisheryaquacultureproducts

Context of the consultation

EU marketing standards define specific quality requirements for EU and non-EU fishery products that are placed on the EU internal market. Their objectives are as follows:

• Ensuring that the EU market is supplied with sustainable products
• Applying uniform and transparent criteria throughout the single market
• Guaranteeing fair competition in the single market, and
• Improving the profitability of production.

The current marketing standards cover some fresh and chilled products, preserved tuna and bonito and preserved sardines and sardine-like products. EU marketing standards are mandatory requirements along the supply chain (between producers, retailers and potential intermediaries) but they do not reach consumers.

For fresh products, marketing standards define minimum sizes and quality, as well as freshness grades (Extra, A and B) and size categories (1, 2, 3, …, depending on the species). Freshness grades are based on organoleptic criteria (e.g. skin colour, eye, texture).

For preserved tunas and bonitos and for sardines and sardine-like products, EU marketing standards include: (1) authorized species, (2) detailed description of commercial presentation (e.g. for tuna: solid, chunks, fillets, flakes, shredded; for sardines: without bones, without skin, fillets, chunks...), (3) definitions for culinary preparation (in olive oil, natural, in vegetable oil, tomato sauce, marinade...), and (4) minimum ratio between the weight in the container after sterilization and the net weight.

The current evaluation of EU marketing standards seeks therefore to assess the extent to which the existing marketing standards are still fit for purpose.