Italy’s new agriculture minister reaffirms stance against colour-coded labelling

During the first meeting with his EU counterparts, the new Italian agriculture minister reiterated arguments against the French colour-coded nutritional label Nutri-score as the forthcoming EU-wide food labelling scheme.

The gathering of EU-27 agriculture ministers in Brussels on Monday marked the much-awaited debut of Francesco Lollobrigida, appointed as farming minister in Giorgia Meloni’s government which took office exactly one month ago.

Despite not having a strong agricultural background, Lollobrigida is a prominent member of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.

At his first appearance in Brussels, he raised the issue – very sensitive for Italians – of food information to end consumers, stressing it should be as broad as possible.

“However, we do not believe that there should be instruments that are not sufficient from the point of view of information and that are even dangerous from the point of view of conditioning the consumer,” he told the press after the first session of talks.

The reference is to the Nutri-Score system proposed by the French, which converts the nutritional value of products into a code consisting of five letters, from A to E, each with its own colour, from green to red.

Italy has been leading the charge against Nutri-Score, saying the system penalises some core products of the Mediterranean diet.

“We had no official positions [from other ministers], but our feeling is that everyone is aware that this cannot be an instrument, as it has been described, that fully guarantees the end consumers or that is really objectively useful to the European economy,” he continued.

In the context of the EU’s flagship food policy, the Farm to Fork strategy (F2F), the European Commission is expected to propose a harmonised bloc-wide food labelling scheme that will also consider the nutritional aspects of foodstuffs.

Initially scheduled by the end of this year, the Commission pushed the proposal back to spring 2023.

Lollobrigida said he favours “more information, but certainly, a cold spectrum of colours gets us nowhere,” while the Italians are proposing “a more in-depth, clearer way of informing the end consumers so that they know what they are eating.”

The Italian government has offered the Commission another scheme, called NutrInform, based on a battery-powered symbol that shows the consumer the nutritional contribution about their daily needs and dietary requirements.

Environment protection balanced with production

Lollobrigida spoke to EU agriculture commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski about other outstanding issues in the EU policy agenda as well, including the industrial emission directive (IED) and the reform of the pesticide framework.

On the sidelines of the EU Council, he also had bilateral meetings with the Polish, Austrian, Spanish, and French agriculture ministers.

“With all of them, we were aware that there are many points of contact, interests, and willingness to work in harmony, in defence of quality and development, and certainly in defence of the environment,” Lollobrigida told reporters.

“In the EU’s agriculture policymaking, Italy will undoubtedly pursue a sustainable policy, but one that is also compatible with production activities, research, and the enhancement of a sector that we consider strategic,” he said.

Following a similar move of the French government, Lollobrigida’s ministry added the term ‘food sovereignty’ to its name, in a bid to underline the importance of strategic autonomy.

“We have the opportunity to assess those wrong choices that have been made, that of outsourcing every type of supply based only on cost,” he said, referring to the recently increased price of important an agricultural inputs such as fertilisers.

“We believe that today we have to reason in Italy to have the capacity to produce what is necessary for our consumption,” he concluded, adding that, where it is not possible to do so, his country will work within Europe to strengthen alliances with other member states.

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[Edited by Alice Taylor]

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