In order to inform the consumers authentically the Minister of Rural Development wants to regulate the concept of Hungarian products. Public announcement.

This law is necessary because consumers noticed lately that more and more products have labels and pictures that are misleading about the products’ origin and suggest that they are of Hungarian origin when this is not the case. More and more citizens want to buy food products that are of Hungarian origin, however according to surveys more and more people feel cheated because of the misleading labels.

The department of rural development wants to introduce a practice performed voluntarily in order to truly inform the population. In this way the domestic products can be identified and recognized in a more simple and exact way.

The law’s draft defines the condition of the label “100% Hungarian”. This label can be put only on products that were made of Hungarian ingredients and produced by technology used in Hungary. These product can only contain ingredients coming from abroad that Hungary cannot produce, for example citrus fruits or certain spices. However, the rate of these cannot exceed 5%.

The law describes the use of the term “Hungarian product” or “Hungarian food” or any other words with similar meaning. It will regulate how the logo of Hungarian Republic or other national graphic signals could be put on the packages. The law will also describe the conditions of using such adjectives as “special” “premium” “excellent” “extra”.

The draft will define for the first time the meaning of “craftsmen” or “traditional” food stuff according to the value system of the Department of Rural Development and in the Hungarian legal environment. Such products will be marked. It will be indicated, that they were prepared not by industrial process but by manual labor or simply in traditional ways.

The regulation will concern only food enterprises operating in Hungary and it will concern only those who want to mark the origin of the products. Thus the law does not oblige the manufactures to keep the strict rules that are stricter compared to the present ones. However, it describes the conditions according to wich the manufacturer can use logos to distinguish their products and promote their popularity. This law will clarify the situation in the domestic food market because authorities can filter food products that are misleading for consumers based on the legal regulation in the future.

This law drafted by the Ministry of Rural Development tries to achieve that only those products should be marked as Hungarian which truly come from Hungary.

The social debate about the legal draft has started and opinions should be sent in by 16 March to the Ministry’s address or electronically to [[[pJfTlalmzmL6UmjED0am9naW5mb0B2bS5nb3YuaHU=]]] e-mail address signifying “Hungarian product”. The legal draft should be sent to the EU for preliminary review called notification procedure. This procedure takes about six months. Following the review and the domestic negotiations, the new law will probably be approved by the end of Summer or the beginning of Autumn.

(Ministry of Rural Development, Press Office)