• For several years, consumers have been able to compare the nutritional value of foodstuffs thanks to the Nutri-Score logo affixed to the packaging.

  • If this labeling aims to offer less salty products by category and with healthier nutritional qualities, it often relegates products with official signs of quality.

  • Defenders of these local products in Occitania have decided to step up to the plate to ask to be exempted from this index.

They have invaded the shelves of supermarkets, clearly visible on the packaging of food products. From green to red, the Nutri-Score labeling has for some years given an indication of the nutritional value of pasta, yoghurt and other prepared meals. A logo that classifies foodstuffs from A to E, often at the expense of traditional and local products. A small Rocamadour cheese or black pork ham from Bigorre are thus relegated to the glowing letters D or E, while a light soda full of sweeteners will display a green B, better rated than an organic fruit juice.

What to put the defenders of products under official signs of quality and origin on the nerves.

Those of Occitanie have decided to step up to the plate.

It must be said that with its 247 labeled products, whether AOC, IGP or Organic, the region is the leader in Europe for these local foods, made in a traditional way and whose ancestral recipes have not been developed to meet to health standards.

Frédéric Monot, Director of the # Cévennes cheese dairy (# Pélardon AOP) is appalled by the #Nutriscore for cheeses and all #SIQO products.

Products guaranteeing ancestral recipes such as Pélardon are rated less well than light industrial cheese.

pic.twitter.com/mKqpmokWda

- Les Qualivores d'Occitanie (@QualivoresOc) May 18, 2021

“Basically, Nutri-Score was created for ready meals, to evaluate processed products.

Progress on the nutritional value of Roquefort, there will be none.

It already has qualities, calcium contributions, of which Nutri-Score takes very little account, while it highlights fatty acids.

The raw milk that goes into its production is our pride, it respects tradition and the land ”, underlines Jérôme Faramond, vice-president of the General Confederation of Roquefort.

Request for exemption

For the moment, affixing the famous logo on the packaging of their Aveyron cheese is not an obligation, except for producer brands. But the risk of seeing their products shunned by customers if it were to be imposed by Europe remains a real danger. "Six out of ten consumers say that this has an impact on their choice, especially among young people, who will be educated in a simplistic and caricatural system of colors", continues Sébastien Vignette of the Confederation of Roquefort, including 73% of the production. sold on the French market is carried out in large and medium-sized stores.

Gathered within the Regional Food Quality Institute of Occitanie (Irqualim), all these producers of labeled products have decided to step up to the plate to ask the European Commission to be exempted from this labeling system.

For them, certain industrial foodstuffs see their transformation modified to be better noted, to the detriment of the very quality of the product.

“A honey from the Cévennes is rated C, we are not going to ask the bee to go and forage on flowers with nectar less rich in sugars.

We are not against Nutri-Score, but for the benefit of the consumer.

There, we compare incomparable things.

Education must be done, but we take the problem backwards, ”concludes Pierre Ginebre, director of Irqualim, who hopes to be heard.

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