Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North, Fine Gael)
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Question 301: To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food the percentage of Irish products on the shelves in the multiples, not including imports packaged here and sold as Irish; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43641/10]

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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My colleague, the Minister for Health & Children has overall responsibility for food labelling legislation. Under the EU general labelling Directive 2000/13/EC as operated by his Department the place of origin of foodstuffs circulating within the EU is required to be declared only if its absence might mislead the consumer to a material degree. As products, including food products, which are traded within the Community are not generally required to indicate origin on their packaging, figures as requested by the Deputy are not available on an official basis.

Foodstuffs trade freely within the Single Market and over 80% of Irish agricultural production is exported to EU and world destinations. The value of this trade in 2009 was over €7billion and the vision and actions set out in Food Harvest 2020 aim to increase this to €12 billion by 2020.