A very large consensus on the need to protect meat denominations

The EU ministers for agriculture sent, today, a very clear signal to the European Commission on the need to urgently protect meat denominations. The request, tabled by Czech Republic, to call the European Commission to submit a legislative proposal to protect the names of food of animal origin, was strongly backed by 18 Member States (CZ, IT, FR, HU, AT, SK, ES, RO, MT, IE, CY, LT, BG, EL, PT, LU, HR & BE), without a single voice against. 

This broad position taken by ministers sends a strong signal ahead of the trilogue talks on the Common Market Organisation to negotiators and, in particular, to the future Danish Presidency of the EU, which will have to take into account this broad call from most ministers in the negotiations.

Farm Europe and Eat Europe very much welcome this request which respond to the urgent need to stop the discrimination between meat and meat substitutes and imitations and insure effective protection of EU consumers. 

Today, when it comes to meat, there are very precise rules on what, for example, the French “steak haché” or “escalope hachée” must contain : at least 99% meat and less than 1% salt! It is a lightly processed product, with mainly one ingredient. We therefore call on European Commission to respond to the call from the AGRI Ministers and intervene as quickly as possible to put order on the shelves and in the internal market! 

All those willing to support this initiative can support our campaign “Words Matter” following The QR Code below :