Europe's trading partners
Canada slammed the Commission for the draft legislation’s “ambiguity”. Due to this ambiguity and the regulations potential market implications, it said it would be submitting comments to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), it said.
Referring to mandatory origin labelling being trialled in France, Italy, Greece and Finland (among others), it also criticised the Commission for allowing these schemes to proliferate.
“The Government of Canada expects leadership from the European Commission in ensuring that existing and pending mandatory country of origin labelling measures for primary ingredients of individual member states are set aside in favour of [EC guidance] as the multiplicity of measures creates uncertainty for third country exporters, food business operators and consumers.”
“Furthermore, a definition of ‘primary ingredients’ does not appear in the implementing regulation and should be included for consistency in interpretation across all member states,” it said.
The US Dairy Export Council (USDEC) focused on its long-standing bugbear with the EU - protected origin names, such as Feta and Parmesan.
It welcomed the fact that “customary and generic names” fell outside the scope of the draft regulation but called for further clarification of these names.
“The absence of a list of names that the EU considers to be generic and of objective criteria to determine what constitutes a generic name has long been a source of confusion which has negatively the trade rights of international partners.
“Therefore, the Implementing Regulation represents a great opportunity to finally bring clarity and legal certainty to this longstanding issue.”
It called on the Commission to publish a non-exhaustive list of names it considered to be generic and objective criteria to determine what constituted a generic name “in a manner that does not unduly burden existing generic users that seek simply to retain their rights to continue to market their products with commonly used terms”.
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