Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-07-01-Speech-2-240"
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"en.20030701.8.2-240"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner Byrne, ladies and gentlemen, consumers have to have adequate information about the content and composition of the food that they buy. This is true not only as regards what we were talking about this afternoon; it also applies to ingredients. What it says on the outside must be on the inside, no more and no less. Changes in society over the past twenty years have also left their mark on our eating habits. Who, nowadays, peels their carrots and potatoes themselves? Many do not have the time to do it, while all too many have forgotten how to cook or never learned in the first place.
This also resulted in profound changes to the food industry, with complicated processing methods and new ingredients giving rise to finished and half-finished products capable of being prepared quickly and simply, but with ignorance about them breeding uncertainty. Numerous recent health warnings have made the need for information even more urgent, to which one must add the substantial increase in the number of food allergies. People suffering from food allergies rely on the proper listing of what a product contains.
We have now reached second reading stage, and the greater part of the Commission proposal is made up of the Common Position, which limits the number of derogations and takes on board most of the amendments adopted by Parliament at first reading stage, notably the regular revision of the list of allergenic substances and of the way in which it is to be interpreted, the inclusion of celery and mustard in the list and the mandatory indication on the labels of preparations of sauces or mustards of ingredients amounting to less than 5% of the end-product.
I still see the table of allergenic ingredients as the most important element in this directive. The list is to be drawn up on the basis of the latest scientific findings, revised on a regular basis and updated where necessary. At second reading stage, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy adopted three amendments, all of which have the same objective in mind, that of removing the requirement to include on the label processing aids manufactured from substances on the list of allergenic substances, but no longer present in the end product and thus not liable to trigger an allergic reaction. Checks must be carried out to establish if a product is still allergenic if, in the course of its production, a processing aid was used that was allergenic in its original form – protein is one example – but which has lost its allergenic character as a result of the food production process, or which is either no longer present, or present in a modified form. Those who legislate are to establish that this is the case before requiring labelling.
Processing aids have been in use for decades, including in the production of wine and beer. They undergo change in the course of the fermentation process and are naturally precipitated or filtered out. It is therefore a matter of certainty that they are no longer present in the wine or beer that is eventually produced. Allergies have hitherto been unheard-of in this area. As a wine-grower myself, how am I to explain to my fellow wine-growers or to my customers that labels must in future bear the legend ‘made with eggs’? Wine is a pure and clear product of nature, clear and golden in the glass. No research has been done into allergic reactions to it, as nobody has ever heard of there being any – so why this new requirement for labels?
Politics, however, is about doing what is possible, and so I have, with the Commission and the Council, arrived at a compromise making it possible for evidence to be brought within a fixed period of four years. The first point to be made here is that substances in connection with which a study has been notified to the Commission are provisionally exempted from being indicated on labels. The second is that, if the study demonstrates that these substances have no allergenic effect, they will continue to be exempted from the labelling requirement.
I ask the Commission – and you, Mr Byrne – to confirm to me that further new studies can be commissioned and notified up to nine months after the directive’s entry into force, and that exemption from mandatory labelling will apply for a full four years. This is important if we are to have studies of all types.
This new directive gives consumers certainty. Only 2% of ingredients are not required to be included on the label, as against the former 25%. For the first time, there is a list of allergenic substances that must always appear on the label, and we will produce scientific evidence in order to ensure that labels state only what is contained. We are thus avoiding the possibility of excessive labelling making the list of foods allowed to allergy-sufferers ever smaller. I think we should take this sensible approach of compromise."@en1
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