Parma ham tops EU support for agricultural products promotion
It is the single biggest award among 20 programmes that are to receive €23m in EU support over the period as part of an overall €46.5m promotion of agricultural products within the EU and in non-EU export markets.
The parma ham consortia are Consorzio Prosciutto di San Daniele and Consorzio Prosciutto di Parma. They will share the money with cheese associations the Consorzio Grana Padano and Consorzio Montasio.
Other than that, only one other promotion programme is dedicated to meat – that for QS Qualität und Sicherheit, Bonn, Germany, which is to receive €750,000 from the EU towards a €1.5m programme over three years to promote meat and fresh fruit and vegetables in its own country.
QS is the world’s largest quality assurance scheme for fresh foods that involves all participants along the chain from farm to shop. For meat, it integrates all stages of production and marketing into a comprehensive quality assurance system.
Speaking about the Italian grant, Paolo Tramelli, marketing director at Consorzio del Prosciutto di Parma, told GlobalMeatNews: "EU and Italian government funds are helping us to mount a programme in the US with a considerable budget that we would not otherwise have been able to do."
He said that up to 25% of the budget for the ham consortia would be spent on in-store promotions and another 20% to 25% on advertising. The rest would go on items such as attendances at major food exhibitions in New York and San Francisco and local food fairs in the US, on training the service and retail trades, and on digital marketing.
The programme will also enlist a celebrity chef to explain the products and the EU’s Protected Destination of Origin (PDO) scheme, a feature of European food labelling that is not well known in the US, Taramelli added.
The ham producers will include PDO registered Italian cheeses in their US promotions. "There are synergies with them," Taramelli said.
Under existing EU rules (Council Regulation 3/2008), the EU can support up to 50% of the financing of promotion and information measures for meat and meat products.
The total EU annual budget for agricultural product programmes including meat is around €60m. Under a recent political agreement, this will soar to €200m by 2020, with increased promotion in non-EU markets particularly in mind. This new system will apply from 2016.
"This is good news for the agricultural sector in the EU as it will boost our capacity to find new markets in line with our trade strategy and our quality policy," said EU agriculture commissioner Dacian Cioloş.
Jean-Luc Mériaux, secretary general of the Brussels based European Livestock and Meat Trades Union (UECBV) told GlobalMeatNews, said: "Speaking generally, the fact that many applications for agricultural product support are multi-country for the EU market and third country markets is welcome.
"It demonstrates that the organisations are willing to work together despite the complexity of the EU procedure. It is expected that the reform will further encourage multi-country projects."
Mériaux added that third country markets - in North America, Asia, Russia and Norway - included in the latest EU funding package are "crucial" for EU agricultural products and food.
This is particularly so, he said, "in light of the ongoing free trade agreement negotiations with Canada and the USA, and also in light of stagnation of consumption in the EU while markets are growing in Asia".
UEBVC and the EU food trade expect that with the future EU promotion scheme providing a clear input to export markets, organisations will take full advantages of the programmes, he added
