Italy breaks EU law on chocolate labels, says court
Italy has broken EU regulations on labelling chocolate, a court in Luxembourg ruled yesterday (25 November).The European Court of Justice has ruled that consumers in Italy are being misled by local legislation that allows confectioners to use the phrase “pure chocolate” on labels.
The European Commission decided to take Italy to the EU’s highest court in 2008 when it argued that the country had failed to change its rules to meet EU laws that harmonise sales names for cocoa and chocolate across the bloc.
Under EU law, products that contain up to 5% of vegetable fats other than cocoa butter can be labelled as chocolate.
The Commission argued that the phrase “pure chocolate” added a sales category to the sector that violated EU rules.
“The Commission brought infringement proceedings against Italy before the Court of Justice, claiming that Italy has introduced an additional sales name for chocolate products, depending on whether they can be regarded as ‘pure’ or not, which constitutes an infringement of the directive and conflicts with the case-law of the Court,” the ECJ said today.
“According to the Commission, the consumer must be informed whether or not substitute vegetable fats are present in the chocolate through the labelling and not through the use of a separate sales name.”
Italian confectioners can add a label to their chocolate to show their products consist of pure cocoa butter and not vegetable fats, the court said.
just-food is the world’s leading portal for the global pre-packaged food and retail industries. Its daily mix of breaking news, views, analysis and research serves over 100,000 food executives each month. http://www.just-food.com/
n its recent Palm Oil Buyers Scorecard, which evaluates global companies for their suppor...
Amazon Go opened to the public on Monday this week. The key question is what are they going to do wi...
New Zealand’s Restaurant Brands has acquired 10 Australian KFC sites from Yum! Brands.
Japanese beverage giant, Asahi, has acquired AB InBev’s central and eastern European assets which we...
Wine exports to China have increased by over 50 per cent since the start of the China-Australia Free...
Unnecessarily avoiding gluten could be harming your heart says the authors behind a new study publis...
US President-Elect, Donald Trump, has announced America will leave the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TP...
Food and beverage producers will soon be required under American law to declare if any genetically m...