Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-06-15-Speech-2-057"
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"en.20100615.5.2-057"2
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"Madam President, this proposal has been highly controversial and it is extremely complex. As the shadow rapporteur for my group, my guiding principles have been to ask: what information do consumers want when buying food for their families, and how best can we provide this information?
Our continent faces an obesity epidemic on a scale never before seen. We are eating too much fat, sugar and salt, and it is contributing to heart disease, diabetes, increased risk of cancer, strokes, liver disease and even depression. Of course, simply ensuring consumers can easily identify the nutritional content of their food is not a magic cure, but it will enable consumers to be more aware of the food they buy, compare products and identify the healthiest option at a glance, thus taking control of what they eat.
I am proposing we use a colour coding system to do this, not to make a judgment on the product as a whole, but to inform consumers if the product they are buying is low, medium or high in salt, fat and sugar. This will only apply to complex processed foods such as ready-to-eat meals, breakfast cereals and all of those convenience foods produced on an industrial scale whose nutritional content – which is often poor – consumers are often unaware of or misinformed about.
May I stress that this will not apply to German bread. It will not apply to butter or cheese or apple juice, or even alcohol. I have emailed every MEP with more information so please, before you make up your minds, read it so that you know exactly what is being proposed, rather than listening to misleading industrial lobbying or flawed arguments from certain quarters of this House.
I would also urge colleagues to support mandatory country of origin labelling. It is clear that consumers are becoming more conscious of the origin of the food on their plate and want honest food labelling. Of course, this will not always be feasible. Nevertheless, for single products, it is clear that their agricultural origin should be available to consumers and this is 100% feasible. It is already in place for beef, for fish, and for fresh fruit and vegetables. For the ingredients of processed products, it is, of course, more complex, which is why it is only being proposed for meat, poultry and fish in processed foods.
On a final note, we talk a lot in this House about the importance of consumer choice and prevention in public health. Now is our chance to prove that we are serious. Colleagues, actions speak louder than words. Please support my proposals."@en1
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