As of December 14, 2019, dining establishments will indicate the country of origin of the raw meat from which they have prepared meals for their consumers. This stems from an amendment to the Food Code, approved by Parliament on Thursday and submitted by coalition MP Eva Antosova. The norm includes poultry, pork, beef, sheep and goat meat excluding fish, game and ready meals. Restaurant owners find the new statutory duty pointless. They will have to place written information about the meat's country of origin on a visible spot, not only in the menu.
"We will manage to increase the ratio of Slovak meat used in restaurants," claims Agriculture Minister Gabriela Matečná. As she added, they will have control over the quality of meat from farms through shops to restaurants.
"This cannot be said about the meat that has travelled to us several thousands of kilometres," concluded the Minister.
The new measure has been criticised by the Association of hotels and restaurants since many of them order fresh meat via suppliers and not directly from producers.
"The practice is that when you cook a meal for a huge amount of people like in restaurants or canteens, you use the same kind of meat from one supplier but from several producers from different countries," explains the President of the Slovak Tourism Association Marek Harbuľák. The Association finds this directive to be an administrative burden and sees no reason for implementing it on the Slovak market.
"We have no information that this kind of duty to make public the meat's country of origin has been implemented in the legislature of any other European country," said Harbuľák for public RTVS.
Restaurants can be fined from 100 up to 100 thousand EUR for breaching this law.
