The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has announced a “historic new partnership” with the European Union that recognizes its organic standards as essentially equivalent to those administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Effective June 1, 2012, the trade agreement will allow organic products certified by EU or USDA officials to be sold “as organic in either region.” “Previously, growers and companies wanting to trade products on both sides of the Atlantic had to obtain separate certifications to two standards, which meant a double set of fees, inspections and paperwork,” explains a February 15, 2012, USTR press release. “This partnership eliminates significant barriers, especially for small and medium-sized organic producers. All products meeting the terms of the partnership can be labeled as certified organic produce, meat, cereal, or wine.” According to USTR, the two parties conducted “thorough on-site audits” to ensure that their organic programs were compatible.…
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This article considers how those marketing honey in the European Union (EU) may proceed after the European Court of Justice in September 2011 determined that honey with trace amounts of pollen from genetically modified (GM) corn must undergo a full safety authorization before it can be sold to consumers. Highly critical of the court’s opinion, the author suggests that because it is based on a faulty factual premise involving how honey is produced and harvested, other courts would not necessarily be bound by its interpretation of Regulation (EC) No. 1829/2003, because a proper factual background would present a different case. He calls for amendments to the relevant regulations that would exempt honey from their requirements or establish an upper limit for pollen from GM crops in honey. The author also suggests that honey will be subject to authorization and labeling requirements only if GM-pollen is present and detected. But he…
The European Commission recently released a new animal welfare strategy designed to close gaps in the current laws and remedy a lack of uniform enforcement. According to a January 20, 2012, press release, the strategy ultimately aims to (i) provide consumers with more information about “what animal-welfare claims made on product labels really mean,” (ii) ensure that existing rules “really do benefit animals,” and (iii) improve training for animal handlers. In addition, the Commission has pledged to address the transportation of animals to slaughter, as well as introduce a general animal welfare bill and bills pertaining specifically to pig welfare over the next four years. The announcement apparently followed a citizen petition covered in Issue 422 of this Update and initiated by World Horse Welfare (WHW), which called for an eight-hour limit on the transportation of livestock to slaughter. Nevertheless, the group has since criticized the new strategy’s failure to…
The European Parliament has reportedly vetoed a European Commission (EC) proposal that would have permitted reformulated food products to display “percent less” claims pertaining to their fat, salt and sugar contents. According to a February 2, 2012, press release, the rejected changes to Annex of EC Regulation 1924/2006 “would have allowed, for example, a ‘15% less sugar’ claim, which would be based on a previous formulation of the same product,” as well as a “No added salt/sodium” claim. The 393 members of Parliament (MEPs) who voted against the proposal apparently argued that products with such claims “could misleadingly appear healthier” than those with labels indicating a reduced level of sugar, salt or fat. Under current EU legislation, a reduced nutrient claim “may only be made where the reduction in content is at least 30% compared to a similar product, except . . . for sodium, or the equivalent value for salt,…
A petition reportedly signed by more than one million citizens has urged the European Union (EU) to impose stricter rules on the transportation of livestock intended for slaughter. Initiated by World Horse Welfare, the petition challenged current EU regulations allowing transportation times to exceed 24 hours and instead requested an eight-hour maximum on all such journeys. With more than one million signatures needed to trigger a legislative review under the Lisbon Treaty, the long-running campaign evidently gained traction after a November 2011 European Commission (EC) report highlighted alleged failings in the enforcement of livestock welfare regulations. Meanwhile, Danish Socialist Member of Parliament (MEP) Dan Jørgensen has already collected pledges from 119 MEPs in an effort to acquire 378 signatures by March 15, 2012, at which point the European Parliament says it will officially back the measure. “I definitely expect the commission to act on this,” said Jørgensen. “The commission always…
The European Parliament recently adopted a resolution calling for a ban on most uses of antibiotics in livestock. Noting that “superbugs” take the lives of approximately 25,000 people in Europe each year, the non-binding resolution urges the European Commission (EC) to “make legislative proposals to phase out the prophylactic use of antibiotics in livestock farming.” The European Union already bans antibiotics to boost animal growth, but the resolution addresses the need to prevent disease by keeping veterinary and human medicines as separate as possible. Among other things, the resolution urges the EC to prevent “last resort” antibiotics from being used in animals and allow the drugs only to be administered under licensed conditions combined with resistance monitoring. “The growing ineffectiveness of antibiotics is already a serious problem today and a potential health time bomb in the future,” said the Parliament’s Public Health Committee Chair Jo Leinen. “We need a clear EU…
The European Commission (EC) has reportedly endorsed proposed safety measures aimed at better preventing dioxin contamination in animal food and feed. Prompted by a widespread investigation into an outbreak of the toxin that struck German meat and egg farms in late 2010, the draft regulation will be sent to the European Parliament and the European Council for review before the EC can give its official approval. Implementation is expected throughout the European Union by mid-2012. Details of the outbreak were covered in Issues 376, 377 and 381 of this Update. According to the EC, Germany’s dioxin outbreak occurred when fatty acids intended for technical and industrial use were mixed with vegetable feed fat used in the production of animal feed. To reduce such risks from happening in the future, EU member states approved EC Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health safety measures designed to “avoid food recalls…
The European Commission (EC) has adopted a recommendation defining “nanomaterials” as materials “whose main constituents have a dimension of between 1 and 100 billionth of a meter.” According to an October 18, 2011, press release, this definition considers only “the size of the constituent particles of a material, rather than hazard or risk.” As such, it describes nanomaterials as “a natural, incidental or manufactured material containing particles, in an unbound state or as an aggregate or as an agglomerate and where, for 50% or more of the particles in the number size distribution, one or more external dimensions is in the size range 1 nm – 100 nm.” The definition apparently relies on input from the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC), whose draft recommendations were covered in Issue 355 of this Update. The EC hopes that the adopted version…
The European Union (EU) has reportedly introduced new rules that would halve the percentage of added water allowed in bacon products labeled as such. According to media sources, current laws set the added water limit for bacon at 10 percent, but the updated measure would require bacon containing more than 5 percent added water to be renamed “bacon with added water.” If adopted by the European Council this fall, the regulations would apparently take effect in 2015. The plan has since drawn feedback from both bacon retailers and aficionados, as well as government agencies like the U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which said that the stricter requirements would “make it clearer to shoppers exactly what they are buying.” The British Retailers Consortium (BRC), however, was less sanguine, telling reporters that reducing the added water content would make bacon “less moist, less succulent and less tender when it…
The European Commission (EC) has launched a promotional campaign “to help address the difficulties faced by the fresh fruit and vegetables sector following the E. coli crisis.” Consisting of an advertorial and an audiovisual package for distribution in all European Union (EU) member states, the effort is reportedly an attempt to “win back consumer trust.” As part of the campaign, EC announced that emergency funding of €210 million has been targeted to aid EU fruit and vegetable producers. “In recent weeks, the E. coli crisis forced farmers to dispose of perfectly safe vegetables left to rot by concerned consumers,” noted the EC, adding that the “solution can only come from consumers reintroducing fruits and vegetables into their daily diet.” Initially attributed to several sources from France and Germany, an E. coli outbreak earlier this year reportedly killed 51 people. The outbreak’s source was eventually traced to Egyptian fenugreek seeds and…
