The Czech Ministry of Agriculture will launch a €1.8-million campaign to motivate consumers to buy locally produced foodstuffs.
Timed to meet the upcoming Christmas shopping season, the campaign intends to boost sales of some 5,000 Czech-made products awarded with the Agriculture Ministry's quality label.
Supermarket chains in the Czech Republic are ready to participate in the campaign, Marek Toman, president of the Federation of Food and Drink Industries, told Radio Prague.
The organisers intend to convince Czech customers that by buying Czech products, “they do not only support individual producers, but also their own regions, and the economy as a whole,” Minister of Agriculture Marian Jure?ka told a press conference.
The campaign comes after Russia’s recent ban on food imports from EU countries.
What Is Czech?
The Czech Agriculture Ministry also announced plans to introduce new legislation to determine what food products can be labelled as Czech, Radio Prague reports. Existing Czech law is unclear about what can be considered a Czech food product and what cannot. This has led some retailers to label their products as Czech, although these would not qualify as such under any reasonable definition.
“We want a clear definition that would say that food products of Czech origin must contain a certain percentage of ingredients originating in the Czech Republic,” Jure?ka told a news conference. “In the case of vegetable-based products, for example, it should be clear that these were grown in the Czech Republic,” the minister added.
© 2014 European Supermarket Magazine – Europe’s grocery retail magazine, for all your breaking supermarket, convenience-store and FMCG news. Article written by László Juhász.
