New provisions for the labelling of fishery and aquaculture products: Difficulties in the implementation of Regulation (EU) n. 1379/2013

Abstract

The European Union (EU), within the renewal plan of the Common Fisheries Policy and the Common\ud Market Organization, with the Cape IV of Reg. (EU) n. 1379/2013 have introduced new requirements for\ud the labelling of fisheries and aquaculture products. These, as well as providing consumers with more\ud complete information, integrate the provisions of Reg. (EU) n. 1169/2011 and acts as a tool to prevent\ud frauds and illegal fishing. In this work the new seafood labelling provisions were evaluated, starting from\ud the analysis of the art. 35 of the Chapter IV and comparing it with the previous EU dispositions (Reg. (EC)\ud no. 104/2000 and no. 2065/2001). The exclusion of prepared and processed products and aquatic invertebrates\ud from the application of the mandatory seafood labelling provisions and the role of the mass\ud caterer operators with respect to the labelling requirements were identified as the two major shortcomings\ud that still need to be better addressed by the legislator. Overall, what emerged from this work is\ud that, if on the one hand the European legislation on seafood labelling has achieved important goals,\ud evolving and improving itself, on the other it is still controversial and plagued by the same problems as\ud 15 years ago. Therefore, the authors suggest that the regulation is modified at least extending its scope to\ud all products and to at all stages of the fishery logistic chai

The seafood supply chain from a fraudulent perspective

“…Record keeping can be time-consuming, challenging and beyond the skills of the individuals involved relying on methods and technologies that have remain unchanged for decades. Consequently, the ability to effectively and reliably trace consignments of seafood throughout all supply chains in a consistent manner is challenging (Charlebois et al 2014;Ringsberg 2014;Leal et al 2015;D'Amico et al 2016). Incidences of chain of custody abuse have been reported.…”

Anisakis spp. larvae in different kinds of ready to eat products made of anchovies ( Engraulis encrasicolus ) sold in Italian supermarkets

“…Parasites recovered from products in oil were molecularly identified as A. pegreffii (70.3%) and A. simplex (29.7%). The geographical origin is not compulsory for fishery products in oil (D'Amico et al, 2016) and it was not reported for 5 of the 14 brands. All the larvae molecularly identified from these products were A. pegreffii.…”

Advances in the analysis of complex food matrices: Species identification in surimi-based products using Next Generation Sequencing technologies

“…Therefore, surimi represents a multispecies seafood product, as its production can imply the use of an extremely wide range of species [2,5]. According to the current EU law on food labelling, it is not mandatory to provide the commercial and/or scientific name of the seafood species present in SBPs [9–11], although some brands report it voluntarily (author’s note). However, the presence of ingredients potentially causing allergies, listed in the Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 (including “fish” and “molluscs”) must be declared.…”