The restaurant must inform if the cheese in the shop salad is made with palm fat

by times news cr

2024-09-19 08:23:23

The Ministry of Agriculture changes the regulation after numerous inquiries from consumers

If the cheese used for various dishes in restaurants contains palm oil, the restaurants will be required to label it. This was announced by the Minister of Agriculture and Food Georgi Tahov during the 6th meeting of the National Food Council on Wednesday.

This will be spelled out with changes to the regulation on the provision of information to consumers about food. They will make it mandatory to announce the exact composition of the dishes.

“The initiative is in response to numerous inquiries and the broad public response on the subject,” Takhov explained.

It’s in grocery stores

it is mandatory that imitation dairy products be explicitly indicated and labeled. There, they are placed on shelves separated from dairy products. However, restaurants are now not obliged to write on the menu if the shop salad, for example, contains an imitation dairy product instead of cheese. And only if customers ask are they obliged to inform them.

As “24 Chasa” announced last month, in our country

we have eaten, without knowing, 6 thousand tons of palm oil

only for the period January-June this year. Most often, such cheese is contained in patties and salads in restaurants.

“It is not a problem to write on the menu that a certain ingredient is an imitation product – we still write the allergens in the individual dishes. But in changing the regulation, let’s keep in mind that we don’t produce the dairy products, we buy them from suppliers who often don’t produce them either. There is no guarantee that we will receive the milk product we paid for, and not an imitation one”, comments the chairman of the Association of Restaurants in Bulgaria, Richard Alibegov. According to him, the change in the regulation will greatly increase complaints and inspections, which only wastes administrative resources.

With food, the Ministry of Agriculture will pay special attention to

the content of trans fatty acids,

other than those naturally occurring in fats of animal origin. According to the norms, processing enterprises must not allow more than 2 g of non-animal trans fatty acids for every 100 g of fat in dairy products and have systems to control the raw materials, the recipe, the technological process and the final product. Trans fatty acids are created by adding hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils to make them more solid. They are known as the unhealthiest fats, but they are often used in fried and processed foods.

Enhanced sampling begins, with the focus on dairy products being an urgent priority in the multi-year control plan 2024-2026 and national monitoring programs of the BFSA, announced its executive director Svetlozar Patarinski.

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