Financial Times Round up : Horsemeat scandal reverberates across Europe

A must visit to these pages :

1. ttp://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P7-TA-2010-0222&language=EN#BKMD-15

f. ‘ingredient’ means any substance, including food additives and food enzymes, and any ingredient of a compound ingredient, used in the manufacture or preparation of a food and contained in the finished product, even if in an altered form ▌;

g. ‘place of provenance’ means the place, country or region where the products or agricultural ingredients are wholly obtained, in accordance with Article 23(2) of Regulation (EEC) No 2913/92;

h. ‘compound ingredient’ is an ingredient that is itself the product of more than one ingredient;

    2. REGULATION (EU) No 1169/2011 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCILof 25 October 2011on the provision of food information to consumers
(amending Regulations (EC) No 1924/2006 and (EC) No 1925/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council, and repealing Commission Directive 87/250/EEC, Council Directive 90/496/EEC, Commission Directive 1999/10/EC, Directive 2000/13/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, Commission Directives 2002/67/EC and 2008/5/EC and Commission Regulation (EC) No 608/2004)

Reading is a bit boring but there isn't much room for a loophole in the EU legislation and more significant the legislation in place adopted at the EU level should have lead to a fair level of transparency for the consumer. What shows so far the new French meat scandal is the legislation on labeling has been and is infringed on a regular basis without any reaction from the French Gov or Brussels and worse the previous French meat scandal over Hallal meat sold to unaware consumers a year ago sent out the worse possible message, welcome to dodgers, the French meat industry has very low ethics when it comes to consumer information, the Gov doesn't really mind and Brussels do very little. The result shouldn't come as a surprise, when a Gov leads the way to infringe the EU legislation on labeling, the consequences were to be expected, it was a direct invitation launched to any would be fraudster, if you need low and loose ethics and poor EU legislation oversight on meat labeling for the consumer, come to France we have the industry and Gov with the right standards for you to operate free of Northern Europe painful red tape.