Exploitation and marketing of natural mineral waters

The amended proposal for a directive was approved, with the following specific comments: - Article 4(1) referred to the separation of unstable constituents; the ESC considered that reference should also be made to the separation of ‘undesirable constituents’ in order to take account of advances in the field of toxicology, subject to the proviso that these constituents were removed using methods authorised under the directive being considered; - the ESC considered that it should be mandatory in all cases for the labelling of natural mineral waters to list any treatment that the water had undergone, in order to avoid any grounds for misapprehension and to guarantee fair trade, unlike the proposed amendment to Article 7(3), which left it up to the Member States to take such action; there should, however, never be any question of making specific reference to the processes of decantation and filtration since these processes had always been used to treat both mineral water and tap water; - under the proposed new Article 11, the Scientific Committee for Food was to be consulted on ‘the limits for the levels of constituents of natural mineral waters’. In the ESC’s view, it would be perfectly appropriate for the Scientific Committee for Food also to be consulted in respect of the definition of these ‘undesirable constituents’.