All honeys marketed in the EU will have to state their origin on the jar under the new European "breakfast" regulations.
Following approval by the Agriculture and Fisheries Council the previous day in Brussels, MEPs voted in plenary on Tuesday (12 December 2023) in Strasbourg to revise the so-called Breakfast Directives, including the Honey Directive.
The vote was overwhelming, with 522 in favour, 13 against and 65 abstentions. It is likely that the actions of the profession and the EU investigation into the fraud affecting honey contributed to this decision. See our news item of November 2023.
Some 74% of honeys originating in China were deemed suspect, as were virtually all honeys imported from Turkey and all honeys from the UK, where they were blended from a variety of origins.
There is a real need to inform consumers and at the same time to protect our virtuous beekeepers, who are facing competition from adulterated honeys that are creating unfair competition.
Almost half of the honey consumed in the EU is imported (40%), and 46% of this is suspected by the European investigation (which took place with samples collected in 2021 from operators) of not complying with the mandatory characteristics of the European market.
The new labels to come:Origin, percentage and analysis methods
Under the revised legislation, all the countries of origin will have to appear on the label "in descending order". The exact percentage of each honey blend will also be indicated, with a 5% margin of tolerance. Parliament has asked the Commission to introduce harmonised methods of analysis to combat fraud, and has recommended the creation of a laboratory (probably in Belgium) to carry out these control methods to better detect the adulteration of honey: a subject for the trialogue* expected to take place at the beginning of the year.
But this time the European directive goes further than the French law and has the merit of harmonising labelling standards across Europe.
The text passed by Parliament goes further than the initial proposal, since it also provides for the introduction of a system for tracing the supply chain of honeys that are not marketed directly by the beekeeper,
France has already introduced compulsory origin labelling for blended honeys, but this did not apply when the blend was produced elsewhere in Europe.
The text also aims to protect the quality of honey by banning the vacuum evaporation of honeys, which degrades the quality of the product, distinguishing between overheated and unheated honey, and abolishing the concept of "filtered" honey. This is also in line with the intrinsic quality of the products and fairness of production costs. Providing for a minimum filtration threshold also aims to ensure that the pollens present can be used to trace the geographical origins of the honey.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2023-0445_FR.html
*Trialogue: In the context of the European Union's ordinary legislative procedure, a trialogue is an informal inter-institutional negotiation between representatives of the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission.
sources used :Unaf, Agrimer, EU, European Parliament
