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From December 13th, the labels on food (and drinks) will change in agreement with the uniformed EU-wide law.

Amongst the things that will disappear from the labels, there's the actual "manufacturing place" (the address where the product is produced), which raises from our point of view the issue of distinguishing contract breweries from brewers that owns the production plant. I'm not sure that this is good or bad right now, but I thought it would be worth sharing...

There was a coda on the new regulation saying that alcohol needed special treatment and further study. There's some stuff about where we are on that in this post[/url:29s0chzw]. But all in the EBCU are very keen to have actual place of manufacture made a statutory requirement for beer.

Wouldn't it be lovely if beer makers didn't force us to squeeze this basic information out of them?

I agree on this, indeed. I'm not sure though about my feeling re the whole "contractors" thing... I don't honestly think that I should bother about WHERE the beer is brewed (of course except getting misleaded by stuff such as having a foreign beer called "Irish", for example), but care instead about WHO is brewing it... For example, should I consider "less craft" the first batch of a new microbrewery because it's brewed in the premises of another, established, one? This is the debate that it's going on in Belgium and I've been thinking a lot about it recently (without being able to come myself to a clear position, though :/)...

Neither the brewery nor the government can tell you how craft something is, or what intentions lie in the heart of the maker, commissioner or facility owner. They [i:1lso8fms]can [/i:1lso8fms]tell you where the kettles are and what the beer is made of, however.

Yeah, I get that. And it's not really my concern (I mean, the more information can get to the label, the better we can choose, and in the priority list, "where" is definitely one of the top ones)... I'm more concerned that the effects of such an obligation (which partially already exists) would be an excuse to further "discriminate" contract brewers, instead of focusing on the actual quality of the product...

&amp;quot;giacomorizzo&amp;quot;:3je4ez9h wrote: Yeah, I get that. And it's not really my concern (I mean, the more information can get to the label, the better we can choose, and in the priority list, "where" is definitely one of the top ones)...I'm more concerned that the effects of such an obligation (which partially already exists) would be an excuse to further "discriminate" contract brewers, instead of focusing on the actual quality of the product... [/quote:3je4ez9h]


If its contract brewed within Ireland the labelling changes wont make any differ to the consumer. If its currently brewed outside of the country it will have brewed in the EU on it, the only change I can see is you will know where in the EU it was brewed.