Overhauling agricultural quality policy

The EU has started the review of its quality policy for agricultural products. The aim is to streamline the current rules and procedures, to continue to ensure that consumers receive high-quality agricultural products and to boost the diversity of agricultural activities, especially traditional production. The first part of this "quality package" – the proposal for a regulation on agricultural product quality schemes – was discussed by the Agriculture and Fisheries Council on 14 April.

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The overall goal of the regulation is to provide farmers and producers with more coherent, clearer and more easily accessible tools to enable them to inform their customers about the characteristics of their produce.

To do this, it will bring consistency and clarity to the procedures for the existing quality schemes that have proved to be a success over the last twenty years. For example, it will streamline the registration process for geographical indications and traditional specialities, which should help farmers and producers to make better use of these tools. This will also reduce the administrative burden.

In addition, it will simplify the "traditional speciality guaranteed" scheme to make it clearer for users and will also bring all the schemes under one piece of legislation.

Other improvements include clarification of the scope of the protection granted and of the relation between trade marks and geographical indications.

The regulation will also establish a new framework for developing "optional quality terms", such as "traditional free range" for chicken or "first cold pressing" for oil, which should help consumers make better-informed choices.

In addition to the improvements proposed by the Commission, the ministers discussed whether it would be useful to add two additional schemes to the proposed regulation: a "local farming and direct sales" scheme and a specific scheme for "mountain farming produce".

The whole "quality package" is expected to be adopted in 2012.

More information:
Press release (pdf)
Press conference webcast