Growers, wholesalers and retailers in the fresh produce business in Italy must provide customers with a complete pedigree of their merchandise or face hefty fines under a new law in operation from February 18.
As well as price, labels for fruit and vegetables must give a comprehensive range of information as to the variety, category (class I or II), size and origin of the items as laid down by European Union directives. The ruling applies to both packaged and loose merchandise and organic products. Failure to do so will incur fines ranging from 550 euros to 15,000 euros.
The new requirement comes after complaints that large quantities of foreign fruit and vegetables of dubious origins and quality are coming on to the Italian market. Coldiretti, the association of Italian small farmers, states that in less than a month police have seized huge quantities of Spanish oranges, clementines and mandarins that were being sold as Italian.
According to Coldiretti two million tonnes of foreign fruit and vegetables is sold every year as Italian. It said that imports of citrus fruit into Italy in 2002 were up 21 per cent, vegetables by 16 per cent and fresh fruit by almost nine per cent.
'Customers who think they are buying tomatoes from the Campania region round Naples, peaches from Emilia Romagna and oranges from Sicily are really taking home produce from Spain, Holland, Morocco or Turkey,' it said.
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