We look at the label of a slice of meat and read nutritional information, origin, any allergens. But what does it really tell us about how the animal from which it comes from? And on the impact that his breeding had on the environment? Nothing. Today, however, this enormous information gap could be filled by a proposal as simple as it is revolutionary: a traffic light label to reveal what happens before the food arrives on our plate.
The healthiness of a food, in fact, is no longer just a question of calories and proteins. As aware consumers, we know that true health also passes through the well -being of the planet and animals. A concept reiterated even in a courtroom, where a judge, archiving a complaint against journalists, put black on white who: “A public interest is undoubtedly existing to the knowledge of the conditions in which the pigs are bred, not only for the protection of animals itself, but for the legitimate consumer right to know the production process.”
The current labels, regulated by EU Regulation 1169/2011, are daughters of an era in which attention was focused almost exclusively on the dietary-alutistic aspect. Today that paradigm is overcome. A product cannot be considered “healthy” if its production chain has polluted air, water and soil. The absence of this information does not allow citizens to make ethical and sustainable choices, nor to reward the most virtuous breeders with their purchases.
This lack of transparency has left free field to the phenomenon of Greenwashing, those “green” declarations often vague against which the EU has recently intervened. But collective sensitivity asks for more. For this reason, a concrete proposal is coming which will be officially presented on October 10th at a conference in ISDE (Association of Doctors for the Environment).
The idea, advanced by the veterinarians Eva Rigonat and Antonio Lauriola and the lawyer Daria Scarciglia, was born right after the approval of the 2024 review to the European directive 2010/75/EU. It is the environmental label of the meat, an immediate visual system for everyone.
The mechanism is a five -colored “traffic light”, which classifies farms according to objective criteria such as pollution, the density of the garments and the confinement time. Here’s how it would work:
A system of this type would represent a leap of epochal quality, transforming the label from a simple nutritional card to a real mirror of the entire production cycle. For consumers, it would finally mean being able to choose with full awareness.
