Exlusive interview with Paolo Patruno, CLITRAVI
What challenges are the meat processors from the European Union facing?
One important challenge is the decline in the meat consumption. In almost all of the EU member states there has been reported a decrease in meat consumption due to a negative campaign against meat and so one of CLITRAVI's top priorities is working on communication and on improving the image of meat in the consumer's eyes.
The monograph that the IARC announced in 2015 related to the consumption of meat was a problem for all the meat sectors, including the first part of the sector, the farmers, and it's one of our main challenges even if we would like to underline that the problem is more a communication problem rather than the outcome of that research. Because that research, if we read it with scientific eyes, it is not telling anything new. It is not telling anything negative, it simply says that overconsumption of meat can increase the risk of cancer.
Is the vegan trend a problem for the meat industry?
We respect the vegan and vegetarian philosophy even if being a vegan or a vegetarian is becoming more a fashion than a choice. So, we disagree with the messages that some vegan association are sending because I think that one of the main things that should be restored is the democracy on the table. If I respect the vegan it should be also the opposite that vegan should respect also people who consume meat as part of a balanced diet.
Are the vegan and vegetarian trends impacting the meat industry?
Yes. They are impacting the meat industry. But one thing that we are also trying to work on is the use of sales denominations to market products for vegans and vegetarians. So we saw on the retail shelves products such as the vegan mortadella, vegan bresaola, vegetarian T-bone, vegan sirloin, vegan tenderloin, vegetarian ham, meatless meatballs. In this case, I think that those terms from the dairy and meat sector should be reserved only for the products containing dairy and meat.
And we are working in this direction in order to ask a very simple marketing standard protection for at least those denominations that are associated with meat products.
The European Commission, for the time being, is reluctant to work on this issue, but, on the other hand, the Parliament and many member states want to improve the protection for those products because they are not covered at all for PDO/PGI, and so we have to find a way to protect those denominations because mortadella di bologna has obtained a PGI status, but the term of mortadella itself it is not protected, it is generic for the time being so it can be used for marketing a vegan product. We have to find a way to protect those stamps also for the tradition, for the history of those products. And yes, these are products that belong to the meat sector and those stamps cannot be used to promote products that are not made with meat.
There is also another issue which we do not agree because in many cases the campaign to promote these vegan and vegetarian products is 'taste this healthy mortadella'. They are promoting these products as healthy in opposition to the real mortadella which they imply it is not healthy. They are using those researches regarding the overconsumption of meat in order to promote these vegan and vegetarian products, and they cast upon the meat products a negative light. So we can't accept this way of promoting those products, and that is why we are also fighting for the implementation of a legal framework to defend those sales denominations.
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