Sep
19
The minister of Marine Affairs, Rosa Quintana, supported the Galician fishing sector’s claims. (Photo: Xunta, Conchi Paz)
Galicia defends fishery product identification and differentiation
SPAIN
Wednesday, September 19, 2012, 23:50 (GMT + 9)
The Minister of Marine Affairs of Xunta de Galicia, Rosa Quintana, ensured that she advocates the identification of Galician fishery products over the ones from abroad “because they guarantee a differentiated quality.”
Recently, members of the European Parliament (EP) decided to remove the requirement of including the origin of the product and the trade name of the species on the canning labels.
In this regard, the Regulatory Council of Galician Mussel considered the EP’s decision is “disastrous”: “The Galician products will be deprived from protection against anonymous canned products that will flood the market,” the entity complained.
The mussel sector was outraged by the exclusion of the fishery product origin from the labelling of cans in the document of the Common Market Organisation (CMO).
Quintana defended the unanimous opinion of the Galician fishing sector given the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) — which includes the CMO –, “because it is there where the proposals from Galicia appear,” reports La Opinión.
In the agreed document in the Galician Fisheries Council it has been mentioned the importance of strengthening the progress “in the necessary identification and differentiation of seafood, stating the equal labelling requirements for all the products and the possibility of incorporating additional information from the Member States in order to ensure traceability.”
The Galician mussel industry harshly criticized the popular MEP Carmen Fraga for defending the “simplification” of seafood labelling at the European Parliament.
For the sector, excluding the origin of the product from the labels means to “deprive the consumer from information” and this leads to “fraud.”
Fraga strongly denied such allegations. “To say that it is not only I, but the Parliament, the ones that are requiring the removal of information is to be untruthful. “It is an absolute lie,” said the MEP to the newspaper Faro de Vigo.
“What I can guarantee is that with this commitment [CMO document], the information to be given on the issue of cans to the consumer is not going to be reduced at all,” she stressed.
“What has been attempted is a simplification, and mainly for the semi-transformed products rather than for the canned ones. All the information on the origin, on the type of product, is requested to appear on the cans, which is compulsory, and it is not going to be changed,” the MEP clarified.
Related article:
– New EU labelling requirements outrage mussel producers
By Analia Murias
editorial@fis.com
www.fis.com
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