Last December the Food Information to Consumer, the European regulations about food label, was issued like a tool to give more informations to consumers about food transparency.

The most important revolution for European countries has been the uniformity of food labels in order to give the same informations, readable and fundamental to all Europeans.

A food transparency revolution, maybe.

The new Eu food regulation encourages the transparency, but doesn’t enforce the manufacturing plant indication: a true penalization for the made in Italy. In according to the Eu regulation, only the headquarter must be indicated, but It could be in a different place than the manufacturing plant.

In addition, this kind of regulations incentivize the problem of  the famous products “Italian sounding”, which cause every year a decline of 60 billion euro.

The manufacturers produce in Italy are more competitive in term of quality

For consumers and for the concept of transparency is very important indicate the manufacturing plant. A well-informed consumer is an aware consumer, which with his purchase support the good food market, the food firms that work in transparency and stem the faked food.

What’s gone change for the made in Italy?

• It’s not necessary indicate the provenience of products
• The origin of product is always the customs’ country
• Consumers can know where ingredients come from
• Often, there’s not only one primary ingredient and more primary ingredients mean operational difficulties
• If the primary ingredient is the sum of different primary ingredients, it’s possible indicate the sentence “The provenance of primary ingredient is different than the place of origin of the product”. The fact, this kind of information is too much generic, so worthless.

Producing in Italy is an evident value for a firm and a guarantee for consumers, therefore it’s important preserve it in the food label. Different Italian labels, like Sterilgarda, Generale Conserve and Caffé Vergnana, have started a petition to defend the place of origin of manufacturing plant.  If you want know more about visit ioleggoletichetta.it.

Source: This is a free translation of the article “Occhio all’etichetta”, by the Italian magazine “Food”.