Prohibiting the use of certain additives in the production of certain foodstuffs

The rapporteur, Mrs GROSSETETE, recalled that current Community legislation authorised Member States to maintain national laws prohibiting the use of various additives in the production of certain foodstuffs considered as traditional in their territory, provided that certain procedures and deadlines were met. Tight restrictions had been imposed on these measures at member-state level. The Commission therefore proposed laying down various criteria for determining whether a product was traditional or not, along with the national bans that could be left in place. The rapporteur stressed that there would not be any distortion of competition, since for one thing the products could still be produced using the said additives, though in such cases they would not be labelled as a ‘traditional product’. Thanks to an amendment tabled by the rapporteur, traditional products were to be known by the same name, for example traditional German beer, traditional Greek feta cheese and so on; the rapporteur also wanted to see Danish liver paté and meatballs and Swedish fruit syrups added to the list. Commissioner van den Broek was opposed to Amendment No 1, which sought to require the use of labels stating that the product had been ‘prepared using traditional methods’. He agreed with Amendment No 2, which specified that a note be added to each product stating that it was ‘traditional German’, ‘traditional Greek’, ‘traditional French’, etc. However, he could not accept Amendment No 3, which was aimed at including traditional Danish liver paté and meatballs, because the justification for this, namely the issue of public health, did not meet the criteria laid down within the context of the Directive.