Lower quality of same food brands in Eastern Europe

[Magnolia]

Calling the country “Europe’s garbage can” a Czech MP says he’ll fight the EU law allowing for sales of inferior products in Central and Eastern Europe

There aren’t many countries whose citizens can honestly say that they cross international borders in the name of doing their weekly grocery shopping.

But a number of Czech consumers, not to mention our long-suffering readership, regularly do just that in an effort to avoid the poor facsimiles of name brand products commonly found on local supermarket shelves.

In fact, a 2015 study discovered that 35 percent of foodstuffs sold under name brands in the Czech Republic (instant coffee, yogurt, margarine, and some brands of cold cuts) were made with different ingredients than their Western versions.

Such sales are legal within the European Union where as long as manufacturers list all of the ingredients on their packaging, formulations may differ between markets.Large companies like Coca-Cola and Tchibo have defended the practice by saying that they are simply catering to local taste buds and living standards.

Czech Minister of Agriculture Marian Jurečka, who recently dubbed the Czech Republic “Europe’s garbage can,” says that he vehemently disagrees.

Jurečka has announced that he will team up with policymakers in Slovakia and Hungary to petition the EU to ban sales of inferior food within Central and Eastern Europe.

To that end, a food-quality study has been ordered; that data will be used to push for new legistation that would see consistent ingredients across the EU.

The primary aim of Jurečka’s initiative is to ensure that items with the same producer, the same packaging, and the same font have the same ingredients.

According to Eurostat, food is about 25 percent cheaper overall in the Czech Republic than in neighboring Germany.

https://www.expats.cz/prague/article...zech-republic/



I have to add that it is not true that lower quality food is sold cheaper here. It was proven some of it is even more expensive than eg in Germany.

[Magnolia]

Big companies are selling better food in Austria than they sell in Hungary, even though the brands are supposed to be the same, the Hungarian government said yesterday (16 February).

Hungary’s food safety authority, NEBIH, looked at 24 products sold in both Hungary and Austria by international retailers like Lidl and Aldi. It found, among other things, that the local version of Manner wafers was less crunchy and the domestic Nutella not as mellow as the Austrian counterpart.

“I was dismayed upon reading this brief report,” Janos Lazar, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s chief of staff, told a news conference. “I think this is the biggest scandal of the recent past.”

Lazar said the government would begin a large-scale review of more products available in Hungary. He declined to say what specific action Budapest might take.

Hungary is not alone in its concern. Neighbouring Slovakia’s food quality watchdog said this week it had found differences in taste, look and composition in nearly a dozen products sold locally and in Germany and Austria.

he latest analysis, conducted by the Agriculture Ministry and the State Veterinary and Food Administration (ŠVPS), revealed that about half of the foodstuffs tested displayed significant differences in their composition, the Slovak Spectator reported. The agriculture minister said she will raise the issue at the European level.

“Customers expect the same quality from the same brand, regardless of the country of production or purchase,” Agriculture Minister Gabriela Matečná told a press conference on Tuesday (14 February).

However, she may face a problem, observers warn: EU authorities are not much interested in the quality – as opposed to the safety – of food produced and sold across its member states.

The ŠVPS inspectors tested a range of 22 foodstuffs sold in retail chains in both Slovakia (specifically in Bratislava) and Austria (in the border towns of Kittsee and Hainburg) in November and December 2016.

They picked various kinds of food, including dairy, meat and fish products, chocolates, baked goods, cheese and drinks. As well as checking the packaging, including information about the composition and weight in grams, they also analysed the colour, flavour and smell.

In their analytical tests, the inspectors focused on quality parameters like the content of meat, fats or proteins (depending on which product was tested), and additional substances (like sweeteners and colouring).

“Up to one half of the products contained differences that significantly impact their quality,” Matečná said. These were mainly, with respect to the products sold in Slovakia, a lower proportion of meat, and a higher proportion of fats, more artificial sweeteners and preservatives, and a lower weight in grams, she added.

Tests comparing the quality of foods sold in Western and Eastern Europe were carried out previously in 2011, commissioned by the Slovak Association of Consumers. It tested a selection of labelled food products purchased from supermarkets in eight EU member states: Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Among the selected foodstuffs were beverages, chocolate, pepper and coffee.

Those tests also confirmed that multinational companies typically vary the quality of the products that they ship to different European countries under the same brand. The only product that proved to be of identical quality across all the samples tested was Milka chocolate.

The European Commission, however, responded to the findings by saying that the accusations were baseless, and stating that multinational companies were free to adapt their products to different markets.

POSITIONS

Following the publication of this article, on 20 February the company Ferrero which produces Nutella sent the following position:

"As a global company, we manufacture our products in several production plants throughout Europe and the world. Nevertheless, we can guarantee the high quality standards of the recipes made therein, defined at a central level by our Ferrero Group Quality Department; they are comparable both from the point of view of the composition and the preparation technology used. In addition, all our raw materials and packaging suppliers are qualified and selected according to corporate standards, centrally defined by highly specialized personnel. Furthermore, we carry out chemical-physical, microbiological and sensory tests at a central level. These tests verify and guarantee the quality of all products made in our factories, in order to ensure equivalent high standards.”

https://www.euractiv.com/section/hea...ises-eyebrows/

[Magnolia]

Anybody has an opinion about that?

[Jehan]

I understand your position but this is pretty true:

Large companies like Coca-Cola and Tchibo have defended the practice by saying that they are simply catering to local taste buds and living standards.

Also, it might increase the price too much for the economic level if the products were of egals quality.
Anyway, czech is a capitalist state, if people dislike thoses products they can just by some other.

[Magnolia]

I understand your position but this is pretty true:


Also, it might increase the price too much for the economic level if the products were of egals quality.
Anyway, czech is a capitalist state, if people dislike thoses products they can just by some other.

Come on that argument is ridiculous. Any consumer wants food of lower quality. Btw. it is not only food this also applies to drugstore goods.
And of course people have choice not to buy it but here goes about the principle - it seems that people at least from Czech republic/Slovakia/Hungary (these three countries are usually taken as one market for international companies) are taken as lower people. An Austrian kid gets better quality Milka chocolate than a Hungarian kid. It's insulting and humiliating.

[Dandelion]

I've also noticed this when I was a smoker buying tobacco in a nightstore (run by some unpleasant Pakistani, probably with salafist sympathies). It wasn't meant for the Belgian market and the quality was horrid. This practice goes deeper and not just in the third world, but also the 'second world'.

[Era]

They pay more for it.

[Magnolia]

I wrote it in the beginning:
"I have to add that it is not true that lower quality food is sold cheaper here. It was proven some of it is even more expensive than eg in Germany."

[Era]

I wrote it in the beginning:
"I have to add that it is not true that lower quality food is sold cheaper here. It was proven some of it is even more expensive than eg in Germany."

Is that the case for all products? If yes then boycott is the answer.

[Lucia]

One of our MEPs was also doing that research, but I don't know if she's finished with it.
I think I believe it. In regular supermarket Milka and Nutella are from Poland and in Müller they are from Germany or Austria. The paradox is that the ones in Müller are even cheaper than the Polish ones in other supermarkets...