Consumer Rights
Consumers rely on regulators and governments to rigorously and impartially ensure that food and its packaging are safe and that companies are being held to account for their practices.
Yet time and again we see this trust breached:
- impartiality is compromised via revolving doors between authorities and industry, as with the European Food Safety Agency and the biotech industry;
- products are allowed on the market without proper laws in place to control them and without adequate safety testing, including the growing use of nanotechnology in the food chain;
- roles between regulator and regulated are blurred, for example when the Commission Co-chairs an industry initiative that says it is about sustainability when it is really about public relations.
Food & Water Europe has sent letters to to help ensure non-industry participation in the “European Food Sustainable Consumption and Production Roundtable (SCP Roundtable).” The SCP leadership and membership consists entirely of the food and beverage industry. Download the letter to DG Environment and the letter to Janez Potocnik.
Food & Water Europe is working to make sure you know what’s in your food and water, and who put it there. We’re also working to make sure you have the labels you need to make informed choices about things like GM animal feed in meat, milk and cheese, or “organic” farmed fish.
Learn More
European Organic Aquaculture Certification
Seafood labeled as “organic” is appearing in supermarkets, however, the “organic” label is very misleading. For fish, the term has no real meaning: There are no U.S. governmental organic standards for seafood. These products are often labeled organic based on a private set of company standards, or in accord with European standards. Often, neither of these equate to what consumers in the U.S. expect “organic” to mean.
Take Action
You can help by writing to your MEP and demanding fairer labelling for meat showing clearly where the animals were born, reared and slaughtered – not just packaged. MEPs have supported moves to get make these labels mandatory, including on processed foods, so we need to show them we want them to keep the process going. To find your local MEP, go to the European Parliament website.