Answer given by Vice-President Katainen on behalf of the European Commission
21.5.2019
1. Annex VI, point 6 of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011[1] introduces a provision for the labelling of added water in fish and meat in order to prevent that consumers are misled. Mislabelling when added water represents more than 5% of the weight of the final product is one of the most reported deceptive practices in the fishery sector.
2. Testing methods are in place to check whether the amount of water added to frozen fish are correctly declared.. Since 2016, Member States have reported fourteen suspicions of water addition to fishery products in the Administrative Assistance and Cooperation System (ACC)[2].
These cases were followed up by the EU Food Fraud Network[3] members, who requested the assistance of the Commission in case of products originating from non-EU countries (nine suspicions). Official controls in the establishments concerned allow measuring irrefutably the difference in weight after injection or soaking.
3. Similar cases relating to other products have been reported, e.g. eleven requests relating to suspicious addition of water to chicken have been sent among Member States through the AAC.
The legal limits for technologically unavoidable water in poultry meat are set in Commission Regulation (EC) No 543/2008[4] with the aim that consumers are not being disadvantaged by excessive water added into poultry meat during processing.
- [1] Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2011 on the provision of food information to consumers, OJ L 304, 22.11.2011
- [2] https://ec.europa.eu/food/sites/food/files/safety/docs/food-fraud_network_activity_report_2018.pdf
- [3] https://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/food-fraud/ffn_en
- [4] Commission Regulation (EC) No 543/2008 of 16 June 2008 laying down detailed rules for the application of Council Regulation (EC) No 1234/2007 as regards the marketing standards for poultry meat, OJ L 157, 17.6.2008.