Commission allocates funds for European food promotion campaign
The Commission itself is contributing €28m to the projects which aim to promote the advantages of EU food products in Europe and around the world.
Quality, hygiene, food safety, nutrition, labelling, animal welfare and eco-friendliness will be the areas highlighted in the three year long projects, which cover organic products, dairy, fruit and vegtables, meat, wine, olive oil, honey and flowers.
The promotional activities will include attendance at fairs and shows as well as information campaigns, funded by the EU, professional organisations and individual member states.
Organic promotion
Italian organic food association AIAB was one of the organisations chosen to promote organic products, in a project supported by €4.26m in funding.
Through activities in Italy, Germany and France, AIAB said the project plans to increase consumer knowledge about organic food, its production and benefits.
Another of the big projects, with funding of €8.84m will cover milk and dairy products and will be coordinated by CNIEL in France and NZO in the Netherlands.
Dairy crisis
Milk producer prices have slumped over the past year and so the rational behind the dairy project is to boost demand and therefore prices through promotional activities.
The EU Commission plans to extend the project with additional dairy product promotion programmes.
“We are now launching an accelerated procedure to increase support to the promotion of dairy products, with a budget of €20m,” said Mariann Fischer Boel, commissioner for agriculture and rural development. “Promotion is one of the ways we aim to help our dairy producers out of the current crisis.”
For the additional promotional projects in the dairy sector deadlines for the submission of proposals to member states is 30 September. These will then be forwarded to the Commission by 15 October, before the Commission makes its selection by 15 December.
