New EU legislation on primary ingredient - but for what benefit?

On April 1, new rules will apply to ori­gin labelling. The EU has decid­ed when and how the ori­gin of the pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent in food should be indi­cat­ed. But what is a pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent? What is meant by ori­gin? And are the new rules meaningful?

What is it all about?

To under­stand how the EU’s new rules on ori­gin labelling of pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent fit into the big­ger pic­ture, I con­tact Ulrika Ehrhardt at the Swedish trade asso­ci­a­tion Livsmedelsföretagen. She is an expert on food and legislation.

Ulrika Ehrhardt says that in 2011 the EU decid­ed how infor­ma­tion on food should be pro­vid­ed to con­sumers. This is described in Regulation (EU) 1169/​2011regulation, which is often called the reg­u­la­tion of infor­ma­tion.

At the same time, it was decid­ed that rules should be drawn upon how food should be labelled when the pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent in the food has oth­er ori­gins than the food itself. These rules became clear in May 2018. They are described in Regulation (EU) 2018/​775regulation which is described as an imple­ment­ing reg­u­la­tion.

When the Implementing Ordinance was clubbed, it was decid­ed that food com­pa­nies will be allowed to arrange their labelling until the last March 2020. As of the first of April, it must be clear­ly stat­ed on the pack­ag­ing whether the pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent is of a dif­fer­ent ori­gin from that spec­i­fied for the prod­uct as a whole. This infor­ma­tion can be pro­vid­ed in dif­fer­ent ways, either by talk­ing about the ori­gin of the pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent or by stat­ing that it is of a dif­fer­ent ori­gin from the prod­uct in gen­er­al, says Ulrika Ehrhardt.

Ulrika Ehrhardt empha­sizes that their mem­bers are wel­come to con­tact Livsmedelsföretagen for per­son­al­ized ser­vice and guid­ance. This is some­thing we rec­om­mend as many cas­es are unique and inter­pre­ta­tions remain to be done.

Some concepts

Before we con­tin­ue, we must work out some concepts.

Ingredient:

An ingre­di­ent can be a sub­stance or a prod­uct, but also aro­mas, addi­tives and food enzymes are count­ed as ingredients.

Primary ingredient:

The pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent can be one or more ingre­di­ents that make up more than 50 per­cent of the food. Now the atten­tive read­er might note that only one ingre­di­ent can be the pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent. However, accord­ing to the EU, the def­i­n­i­tion of the pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent also may apply to foods with sev­er­al ‘equiv­a­lent’ ingre­di­ents. Equal in the sense that it is not giv­en from the consumer’s per­spec­tive which of the ingre­di­ents is the pri­ma­ry. An exam­ple is but­ter cook­ies where either flour or but­ter can make up more than 50 per­cent of the con­tent. Some con­sumers may asso­ciate but­ter cook­ies with but­ter and think it should be the pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent. And for oth­ers, it is flour that applies. This is what the EU has tak­en on.

Country of origin:

A coun­try of ori­gin can be a coun­try where the entire extrac­tion and pro­duc­tion of the ingre­di­ent takes place. But a coun­try of ori­gin can also be the last coun­try where an ingre­di­ent is put togeth­er if the ingre­di­ents come from dif­fer­ent countries.

Place of provenance:

If an ingre­di­ent is more asso­ci­at­ed with a geo­graph­i­cal area than a coun­try, you can spec­i­fy a place instead of ori­gin. It can be a city, a region, a sea, or a land area that includes sev­er­al coun­tries, such as the Alps.

Supply chain

In the food indus­try there are a num­ber of dif­fer­ent play­ers, all of which play an impor­tant role in the sup­ply chain. But it is the end pro­duc­er, i.e the food pro­duc­er, that sells to end con­sumers or large house­holds that the new reg­u­la­tion is aimed at.

The new reg­u­la­tion places par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on end pro­duc­ers who work with pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ents and who also have a com­plex, or irreg­u­lar sup­ply chain.

The end man­u­fac­tur­ers have the ulti­mate respon­si­bil­i­ty for declar­ing the goods cor­rect­ly, but must at the same time take into account unpre­dictable events and exter­nal factors.

We can imag­ine a French cheese pro­duc­er who gets the pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent milk from France, but dairy farm­ers are on strike at the moment, which actu­al­ly hap­pens from time to time. They have to search else­where in for­eign coun­tries. Perhaps they will end up with milk from Switzerland, Belgium, and Germany. The cheese man­u­fac­tur­er must then spend time and mon­ey on mark­ing each of these coun­tries and keep track of which milk is asso­ci­at­ed with which country.

Or?

Food drink Europe

Now things become a bit pecu­liar. Food drink Europe is an indus­try orga­ni­za­tion that has pub­lished a guide with guide­lines for how food pro­duc­ers should nav­i­gate the new regulation.

In the guide you can read about the options avail­able when it comes to dec­la­ra­tion and labels.

You are free to choose just how pre­cise you want to be when it comes to the dec­la­ra­tion of ingre­di­ents. The only com­mon denom­i­na­tor is that the coun­try of ori­gin or place of ori­gin must be under­stood by the ‘nor­mal­ly informed aver­age consumer’.

EU and non-EU

We can choose a coun­try and we can choose a place of ori­gin. We already know that. But we can also choose ‘EU’, ‘non-EU’. And lis­ten and be amazed - ‘EU and non-EU’.

If we look back at our exam­ple with the French cheese­mak­er, the new reg­u­la­tion does not have to mean as much hard­ship as we thought. If we have pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ents from Switzerland, Belgium and Germany, our French friends pre­fer to choose ‘EU and non-EU’ as the declaration.

Obviously, one objec­tion would be those food pro­duc­ers who choose the easy route may be affect­ed by cred­i­bil­i­ty prob­lems. It can become a pres­ti­gious norm in the indus­try to be as detailed as pos­si­ble. But it remains to be seen. Currently, our French cheese­mak­er has solved the problem.

As long as you bring milk from all three coun­tries in the same prod­uct, you can use the same labels all the time. As you know, Switzerland is not a mem­ber of the EU.

If you choose milk sole­ly from Belgium and Germany, but some­times from Switzerland, you have to keep track of and switch between dif­fer­ent labels which can be both expen­sive and resource consuming.

But imme­di­ate­ly, new ques­tions arise. Doesn’t the reg­u­la­tion become a bit ineffective?

Another option

The whole point of the reg­u­la­tion is to cre­ate trans­paren­cy for the consumer.

A cheese, or any oth­er prod­uct for that mat­ter, whose pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent comes from the EU and out­side the EU tells us almost nothing.

However, there is anoth­er option. You do not even need to men­tion the coun­try of ori­gin or place of prove­nance of the pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent. It is suf­fi­cient to men­tion that the pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent has a dif­fer­ent ori­gin or prove­nance than the food as a whole.

‘The pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent milk does not come from France’, our cheese pro­duc­er may choose to put it.

A balancing act

How should we inter­pret and under­stand the reg­u­la­tion? Why has it become so vague when the inten­tion has been to strength­en con­sumer power?

The European Commission’s com­ments on the reg­u­la­tion sug­gest­ed that the ini­tial labelling of pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent should be vol­un­tary. At the same time, the pres­sure from con­sumer groups and sus­tain­abil­i­ty move­ments have been great to bring about a change in the law and thus increased transparency.

The result is a clas­sic legal gym­nas­tics exer­cise. You get a change in the law which still means that you have to make a dec­la­ra­tion of the goods. But at the same time, the nature of things does not change very sig­nif­i­cant­ly. At least not for the better.

For what benefit?

In the worst case, the result may be end pro­duc­ers alter­nat­ing between dif­fer­ent labels, depend­ing on which sup­pli­er they are cur­rent­ly using. It can also affect the inven­to­ry man­age­ment and pro­duc­tion process as the raw mate­ri­als must not be mixed.

All this costs mon­ey. And for what ben­e­fit? There is a great risk that vague and impre­cise word­ing about ori­gins makes the con­sumer con­fused rather than enlightened.

There are still many ques­tions about the reg­u­la­tion that may be the sub­ject of new arti­cles lat­er on. Something tells me that we will have rea­son to return!

Are products affected by Eureba or Navia?

How are prod­ucts that con­tain Eureba or Navia affect­ed by the new rules? I ask Suzanne Preddie-Atterby, Bayn’s expert in food law.

Suzanne Preddie-Atterby notes that the new rules only apply to pro­duc­ers of food intend­ed for end con­sumers or large house­holds (end pro­duc­ers). However, pro­duc­ers ear­li­er in the chain are still affect­ed because they must ensure that end-pro­duc­ers have enough infor­ma­tion to be able to com­ply with the new rules.

In the case of Eureba - which replaces sug­ar one by one - it can be con­sid­ered a pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent only if the sug­ar it replaces con­sti­tutes at least half of the ingre­di­ents in the final prod­uct. With the excep­tion of almond pulp and marzi­pan, it is not like­ly. Thus, in prac­tice, the use of Eureba is not affect­ed by the new rules.

As for Navia - which is a plant extract such as ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides - they are used in such small quan­ti­ties (for exam­ple, 3 grams of ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides give the same sweet­ness as 1 kg sug­ar) that they are not affect­ed by the new rules either.

You are of course wel­come to con­tact us if you have any questions.