New regulations will enter into force in two days, from now on it will be mandatory to indicate in large letters if a food contains insect protein.
The Minister of Agriculture’s decree was published in the Magyar Közlöny, the essence of which is to amend the labeling rules for foodstuffs, reports 24.hu. The reason for the amendment is that the European Commission recently decided that, after the mealy bug, house crickets can also be marketed as food and food ingredients. The current decision was announced earlier by Minister of Agriculture István Nagy.
Pursuant to the new regulation, in the future non-prepackaged food must also be clearly marked if it contains an insect or its larva that has been approved as a new food. The new regulation also applies to prepackaged foods that can be ordered online and sold in stores. In relation to the name of the food containing insect protein, the following inscription must be displayed in at least the same font size as the font size used for the name of the product
Attention! The food contains insect protein!
Foods containing insect protein must be placed on the market separately for customers. The decree of the Minister of Agriculture will enter into force in two days.
The regulation applies only to foods containing insects or their larvae approved as new food, the tightening does not affect foods with purple lice and scale lice. István Nagy previously justified this by saying that carmine and carminic acid (E120) and shellac (E904) have long been used as additives in the food industry.
A serious industry is starting to develop around insect protein, we just recently wrote the story of Agroloop, which has received an investment of HUF 7 billion and is involved in the production of feed protein.
