A viewer complained to 4. studija about products of unknown origin in a shop, citing sugar as an example.
"If the seller doesn't know the country, maybe he doesn't know the quality of the product?" asked the viewer.
LTV found the sugar bag in question on a shelf in a shop and concluded that the price tag read: "Country of origin unknown" and "Made in Lithuania".
According to Vineta Grīnberga, Head of the Food Distribution Supervision Unit at the Food and Veterinary Service (PVD), the Ministry of Agriculture has developed guidelines for cases where the country of origin of a product is different.
"For example, Coca-Cola can be produced in both Poland and Lithuania. So there can be different batches produced in both Poland and Lithuania," said Grīnberga. "This can be the case if the company has not brought additional information with them. Because the labeling, according to the regulations, is appropriate - it can say 'Made in the European Union (EU)'. According to our Cabinet of Ministers regulations, the EU cannot be indicated because it would not be the country of origin of the producer."
So, a product label can state that the product is made in the EU or outside the EU, but a price label cannot.
Sugar can also be produced in different countries. In this case, the company chooses the country of production which offers the lowest price at that moment. But the buyer does not know all this background and is turned off by a sign that says 'Country: no information'.
The rules on product trademarks were adopted in order to identify goods produced in Russia. However, in a sense, the new rules are misleading buyers, as consumers do not have a reliable sense of where a given product is made.
Liene Dupate-Ugule, Communications Manager at Maxima Latvia, said that the company had approached the Ministry of Agriculture with a suggestion to indicate the country of production on price labels in such cases. Dupate-Ugule also pointed out that a product from several countries can be mixed on the same shelf, as different batches are possible.
Inga Bite, PR Manager of Rimi Latvia, noted that one of the products that is problematic in this respect is tea, which may be produced in different countries.
"It can be harvested in Indonesia, it can be harvested in China. Then another variety of tea can be added in another country. In the end, it ends up on our shelves. But in this case, we are not allowed to indicate this country of origin and we have to show on this price label that the country is unknown, according to the current Cabinet Regulation," Bite explained.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Agriculture, which had initiated the changes in the design and content of the price labels, explained that nothing has changed significantly - we may have become a bit more observant and started to read more what is written on the price labels.
"The consumer is not being misled - European legislation now requires that the operator responsible for the information on the label must be identified. So it is not always necessary to indicate the producer who produced the product," explained Dace Ugare, Deputy Director of the Veterinary and Food Department of the Ministry of Agriculture. "This information has been available for as long as we have been in the EU, we have just been bad at reading it, at getting the information on the label."
The only change at the moment, the Ministry said, is the obligation for traders to highlight the country of origin on price labels. "
