The European Commission confirmed that some multinational companies have started the process of product quality equalization in order to forestall recent legislative changes, on which Croatian Euro-Parliamentarian Biljana Borzan, who was recently appointed for the Rapporteur of the European Parliament for food quality difference, also works. Yesterday, the Commissioner for Consumer Protection Vera Jourova noted three companies that are changing their recipes. One of them is HIPP, which committed itself to do that after results of a research conducted by deputy Biljana Borzan and Croatian food agency were published, and they showed that tested children food in Croatia is less healthy than the one sold in Germany.
“The Commission stated that Ferrero also committed to equalize quality of Nutella in all countries. After my research, Ferrero stated that quality of Nutella is higher only in Germany, while it is equal in all other countries of EU. They started the process of decreasing the quality of Nutella in Germany in order not to get into the situation where they would be called out in researches. They explain it with changes in food supply chain, but consumers in Germany connected that with the problem of double quality and they are very unhappy,” stated Borzan.
To recall, the research of deputy Borzan by comparing Croatian and German Nutella determined that product from Croatia contains whey powder and smaller percentage of skim milk powder, while product from Germany contains only skim milk powder. Whey is much cheaper material. Moreover, they noticed significant difference in colour, consistency, smell and taste of product: product purchased in Croatia is sweeter, dense and more aromatic on cocoa while the product from Germany is darker and more aromatic on nuts.
“The Commission also mentioned Bahlsen, German company that produces waffle and cookies, which also committed to use exclusively butter in all their products that are labeled as “cookies with butter”. It is obvious that some manufacturers wisely decided to forestall changes on which we are working in European Parliament. I urge other manufacturers to take part in this as well, especially those with largest differences we found in Croatia, such as Wudy and Ariel,” noted Borzan.
(Source: akta.ba)
