Place of Farming Legislation Planned for Next Year

EU - Brussels’ “place-of-farming“ communication published last week sets out ideas as to how Europe’s food quality policy should evolve in the years ahead, says farm commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel.

3 June 2009

2 minute read

Legislation will be put forward next year.

The communication was discussed by member countries at an informal farm council meeting in the Czech Republic this weekend and the dossier is expected to be picked up by the Swedish presidency for the second half of the year.

Brussels sees Europe developing mandatory rules for basic marketing standards with some special reserved terms such as “mountain product“ and “low carbon“, the latter being an interesting development as it foresees environmental issues having a marketing value.

The “Place of Farming“ proposal, which would be of significant value to British pig producers, comes from last year’s European Commission consultation on Agricultural Product Quality.

It demonstrates the importance of pig producers taking part in European Commission consultations. There were 560 responses to the consultation with a large number of European producers and consumers calling for country of origin labelling.

Retailers and processors on the other hand are opposed to such a move, claiming it will be hard to implement with processed foods.