In short: 75% of Germans are for labeling European products but the supermarkets won’t do it claiming it’s too complicated.
Denmark has done it! At least, Salling Group, which is the biggest owning multiple different store names.
The problem with how Salling does it, is it’s only based on ownership of the product. Someone could for example produce and manufacture 100% of the product in USA and then ship it to Denmark, but if the owner is european, then it’ll be marked as a european product.
Considering that the USA is a high-cost country that is much more likely to own brands than it is to actually manufacture branded goods (that are sold in Europe, at least), who does anything similar and why would they?
If the owner is european, doesn’t that mean taxes are paid here?
Some of them are, sure, but the people working and producing the products in a different country will also pay taxes to that country.
Even if we ignore the workers’ taxes, if I was to buy an ingredient for my product from an american company, they will pay taxes from the money I paid them. This is why what Salling is doing is at best a bit useless and at worst completely misleading. I will have no clue wether or not something has been imported and repackaged, had ingredients imported, or is 100% european produced with the labeling. In essense all it tells me, is that the person who sold the final product is situated in Europe in some capacity.
Yes, I understand. You’re right. I wonder how they could do a 100% accurate tracking, considering how intertwinned todays world economy is. I think even the most European of brands manufacture stuff in China.
I suppose a percentage based on multiple factors could work. Like, just spitballing numbers here.
- 50% would be based off of ownership. If the ownership is completely european, the product gets 50%
- 50% would be based off of manufacturing location. If 80% of the product is from Europe, then the product gets 80% of 50%, so 40%.
- Final score, 90% european. Label the product with this percentage, and you’ll possibly have an advantage over your competitor if your percentage is higher.
It would however be quite expensive to make the documentation for every single product sold, but Denmark already requires something more convoluted and detailed with construction materials and environmental impact, so I suppose it wouldn’t be impossible to implement. Just a matter of will.
Edit. Fucked up the percentage stuff a bit, made it make sense.
That’s an interesting approach. But yeah, it would need to be made law because companies wouldn’t take on that work on their own.
Hopefully Salling can improve their methodology, I still think its pretty cool they’re trying to promote responsible buying.
This is true, but I do believe there opposite is way more normal.
may very well be, but my point was more that even with labelling euro products this way, you’re still not guarenteed not to support american corporations.
It’s a bit of “the enemy of good is perfect”, or however that goes, but it’s still worth taking into account.
as if most products don’t list country of origin already anyways…
Usually country where it was made. Food and drink that is sold in europe is usually made in europe (at least the processed kinds, raw ingredients are often from elsewhere), but if the brand/brand owner is american, most of the actual profits go to the US.
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The companies store this information in the ERP. Well, most do.
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ERP is Enterprise Resource Planning. Nothing the customer can access, but the information is available. The companies just have to use it. I mean: every vegetable price label reads “Tomatoes - Marokko”, “Cucumber - Spain”, “Cherries - Midgard”.
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