Following the animal protection referendum, Rudolf Anschober presented a draft ordinance for the mandatory labeling of food.
The animal protection referendum received more than 400,000 signatures last week. Among other things, it called for mandatory food labeling. Health Minister Rudolf Anschober has now presented a draft ordinance.
In the future, food in canteens, schools and hospitals will be labeled with reference to their origin, but for the time being this is only intended for beef and eggs. Catering companies are also affected, the catering industry is excluded for the time being, reports “krone.at”.
According to the Ministry of Health, the regulation should be binding for all companies “in which food is prepared for direct consumption by the end consumer as part of a commercial activity”. That would also affect restaurants.
However, the press spokesman for the Minister of Agriculture, Daniel Kosak, told “krone.at” that no binding origin labeling is provided for inns. He referred to the government program in which “greater dissemination of the designation of origin” in the catering industry should take place on a voluntary basis.
Also the chairman of the restaurateurs in the Chamber of Commerce, Mario Pulker, sees the compulsory labeling in the catering trade as “an absolute no-go”, as he emphasized in the “Standard”.
The final prescription has not yet been finalized. Country origin labeling is currently only possible for foods where the EU-wide Food Information Regulation and Primary Ingredient Regulation do not apply, as explained in a legal opinion by Innsbruck European law expert Walter Obwexe. These include beef, eggs, and fruits and vegetables.
The planned labeling should provide consumers with better decision-making support and the opportunity to select regional products, according to Anschober. This is also intended to promote domestic agriculture.
The spokesman for the animal protection referendum, Sebastian Bohrn Mena, welcomes the initiative: “Especially now, when so much tax money is in motion, it should also be used to promote animal welfare, nature conservation and the safeguarding of our local, small-scale agriculture.”
