Pet Owners To Get Better Food Information

Pet owners and farmers will soon get better information on the feed they buy their animals and pets after EU agriculture ministers approved new EU feed marketing rules today.

The new legislation will considerably simplify the existing procedures and help promote innovation and competitiveness in the European feed sector, as well as reducing red tape for feed operators.

Androulla Vassiliou, EU Health Commissioner said: “I welcome the Council’s decision today and that of the European Parliament in February. While maintaining our high standards of protection of animal health, welfare, food and feed safety, this new legislation represents a major step forward for the simplification and modernisation of procedures for labelling and marketing animal feed and pet food. At the same time it will help boost the competitiveness of the EU livestock sector.”

The regulation, based on a Commission proposal from 2008, was endorsed by the European Parliament on 5 February and is expected to enter into force later this year.

The main provisions:
· creation of a guide to good labelling for farm animal feed and one for pet food on the initiative of feed manufacturers and users and approved by the Commission. The development of EU codes of good labelling practice improves customer information, ie how much chicken a pet food contains if it is labelled “with chicken”, or on how feed additives are labelled.

· responsibility of the feed business operators is extended to those dealing with pet food, an area in which the recent melamine incidents revealed a gap;

· list of prohibited substances for feed use;
· obligation to undergo a pre-market authorisation procedure for “bio-proteins” (feed materials manufactured by certain procedures) is abolished. Now “bio-proteins” have to comply with the general provisions for feed materials;

· mandatory labelling particulars for feed materials and mixed feed.
· solution to the controversial issue of the declaration of feed materials in compound feed (so called “open declaration”) in a balanced way to allow innovation and, at the same time, appropriate information for the customers.

· establishment of a Community catalogue of feed materials. The regulation transfers the initiative for updating the EU’s list of feed materials, specifying the most relevant compounds used in feed, from the legislator to feed operators. Market transparency will be improved because the list of feed materials will better reflect current formulations and incorporate innovations such as co-products from bio-fuel production quicker

For more information please visit:
http://ec.europa.eu/food/food/animalnutrition/labelling/index_en.htm

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Tags:  pet food