Food Law : an Italian perspective

FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE FOOD LAW, all operators in the agri-food sector are defined as Food Business Operators (FBOs), regardless of the economic sector they belong to, with equal obligations concerning the regulations on: Food traceability – REG. EU 178/2002; Food hygiene – REG. EU 852/2004; Food labeling – REG. EU 1169/2011; Food contact materials – REG. EU 1935/2004 and REG. EU 2023/2006
The current food safety Italian policy is based on a series of principles established when the European Union introduced an approach called “from farm to fork,” which considers the entire food chain, including primary production (livestock, agriculture, fisheries), the feed used for animals intended for food production, and materials and objects that come into direct contact with food. In the past, food safety was seen as an issue for the individual food-producing company, but now the focus is on the history of a food product with the ultimate goal of ensuring food product safety.
The fundamental principles of the legislation include transparency, risk analysis, risk prevention, consumer protection, and the free movement of safe products within the internal market of the Union and with third countries. With the new approach, the legislation was structured around regulations, as immediately applicable rules that do not need to be transposed by individual UE Member States.
The legislation assigns the primary responsibility for food safety to Food Business Operators (FBOs), defined as “the natural or legal person responsible for ensuring that the food legislation is complied with within the food business under their control.” It is possible to guarantee safe food only if everyone involved in food production implements hazard prevention. Specifically, operators have the responsibility to:
Ensure that the food in their businesses meets the provisions of the legislation relevant to their activities at all stages of production, processing, and distribution.
Apply the preventive tools provided by the legislation (HACCP and good hygiene practices), and ensure the effectiveness of these preventive measures through appropriate verification tools, including product analyses.
Ensure product traceability, i.e., being able to quickly identify who supplied them with what and what they have supplied to whom.
Over the past fifty years in Europe and Italy, the concept of food safety has become an important principle for consumers, leading legislators to promulgate a series of laws to ensure such safety.
From the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, the hygiene aspect of food production lacked a community discipline except for some exceptions mostly represented by the fresh meat sector. In the 1960s, food safety was ensured by the EC Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which aimed to support massive production development by providing farmers with monetary incentives and consumers with supply security; each State had few easily applicable health regulations. The “Country of destination principle” was essential during these years.
The Past
The adoption of UE Directive 85/374/EEC introduced the concept of producer liability for damage caused by defective products, applied to products undergoing primary processing. This led to two new principles: the “Principle of Proportionality” and the “Principle of Exact Correspondence of Values.”
Subsequently, hygiene and sanitary aspects of food were regulated from preparation to processing, transport, and sale. Standards were established, and operators were required to follow them passively with little choice; structural aspects for establishment recognition were also emphasized.
The “Principle of Hazard Management based on Risk Analysis” and European consumers’ desire for safe and healthy food were highlighted. The European Union (EU) took on the task of ensuring that the food we consume meets the same high standards for all citizens.
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The essential premises of the EU food safety strategy are: Standards for the safety of food and animal feed products; Independent and publicly available scientific advice; Rule enforcement and process control; Recognizing consumers’ right to choose based on comprehensive information about food origins and contents.
The first food safety rules date back to the EU’s inception, resulting in a new “General Food Law” implemented between 2002 and 2005. This law defined the principles for food safety and introduced:
– The concept of traceability, ensuring food businesses (producers, processors, or importers) can trace any food, feed, and food ingredient throughout the food chain from consumer to producer. Businesses must recognize their suppliers and customers, known as one-step-backward, one-step-forward in conventional language.
– The establishment of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), unifying work previously done by various scientific committees and making the scientific risk assessment process public.
– The enhancement of the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), used by EU governments and the European Commission for swift intervention in case of food safety alarms.
– The White Paper on Food Safety followed, presenting a detailed action plan to make European food legislation coherent and comprehensive, analyzing the entire production chain, including feed, based on the “farm to fork” principle. It also proposed establishing the European Food Safety Authority to evaluate risks, provide scientific opinions, manage rapid risk alert systems, and communicate effectively. The importance of information collection, analysis, and communication was highlighted for activating accurate monitoring and alert systems, identified as critical and deficient in the past.
Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 was issued a few years after the White Paper on Food Safety, establishing the general principles and requirements of food law, the European Food Safety Authority, and procedures in the field of food safety. It introduced risk analysis and mandated that Member States and the Commission apply the precautionary principle in case of a probable danger, activating provisional risk management procedures pending certain scientific data. The regulation also mandated transparency through citizen consultation and information via public authorities.
Article 3, paragraph 3, specifies that food business operators must “ensure compliance with food law within the food business under their control,” applying a principle of collaboration and accountability. The regulation addresses traceability, mandatory for food safety since January 1, 2005, defined as “the ability to reconstruct and follow the path of food, feed, or a substance intended to be, or expected to be, incorporated into a food or feed through all stages of production, processing, and distribution.”
Article 50 of Regulation (EU) 178/2002 establishes a rapid alert system for the notification of a direct or indirect risk to human health from food or feed, involving Member States, the Commission, and the Authority, each designating a contact point as a network member. The Commission manages the network.
The Hygiene Package, effective January 1, 2006, reaffirmed the primary responsibility of food business operators for every product made, processed, imported, marketed, or served, and the traceability of products as essential for ensuring safety and quality, extending the same criteria and standards regarding food production hygiene and sanitary controls across all Member States.
Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, mandatory since December 2014, and Regulation (EU) No 625/2017 on official controls also align with this direction. In Italy, the National Integrated Plan for Food Safety outlines the control system, utilizing various control bodies to address the complexity and length of the supply chain: Food Hygiene Services, Local Health Authorities, the Central Inspectorate for Fraud Repression, specialized units of the Carabinieri Command (NAS and NAC), the State Forestry Corps, Port Authorities, the Financial Police, border inspection posts, Maritime and Aerial Health Offices, the Customs and Monopolies Agency, the Higher Institute of Health, and the Experimental Zooprophylactic Institutes’ laboratories.
Regulation (EU) No 625/2017 on official controls, largely effective from December 14, 2019, and Regulation (EU) 775/2018 on the origin of the primary ingredient also play roles.
The Future
In line with the Green Deal, FOOD 2030 is an innovation policy aimed at transforming food systems to provide co-benefits for human health, the climate, and the planet. FOOD 2030 is an EU research policy aiming to make food systems more resilient and future-ready, aligned with the goals of the European Green Deal, the Farm to Fork strategy, and the bioeconomy strategy.
FOOD 2030 integrates research and innovation activities throughout the production process, from primary production to processing, sales, waste, and consumption services, striving to bridge the gap between actual and needed innovation.
Unsustainable Food Systems
Studies indicate that current food systems are unsustainable, facing challenges like malnutrition, climate change, biodiversity loss, and food poverty. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of efficient supply chains and the need for increased resilience to emergencies and crises.
Climate-smart systems adapting to climate change, conserving resources, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and so goals are promoting biodiversity and environmental health and sustainable and eco-friendly agriculture and aquaculture and a circular Economy and Resource Efficiency. It’s important to achieve zero waste and use waste as a resource, reduce water use and promote local food availability, reduce plastic in food and use sustainable, biodegradable food packaging, innovation and Community Strengthening, promote sustainable and accessible food, raising awareness, and engaging people in food science and local food policy
Support food-sharing economies from farm to fork, is encouraging social innovation and developing food and
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nutritional systems to meet population needs.
Current Trends
In recent years, Food Legislation has seen significant evolution.
Key trends include the adoption of technologies such as blockchain for enhanced traceability, increased focus on sustainable and organic farming practices, and the growing importance of food fraud detection and prevention. Furthermore, there is a rising trend towards transparency and consumer information, ensuring that labels provide clear and accurate information about food origins and ingredients. The future of food legislation is likely to involve a stronger integration of sustainability principles and the promotion of innovation in food production and safety practices.
A new controversial fronter
The first European Novel Food regulation that paved the way for the commercialization and consumption of insects dates back to 1997 with the issuance of Regulation EC 258/97. This regulation has been subsequently modified by the European legislator to keep up with innovation and technological developments in the food sector. Following the first European regulatory act, Italy showed strong cultural resistance, sticking to the national legislation contained in Law 283/1962, which in Article 5 prohibited “the serving, use, sale, or distribution for consumption of dirty, parasite-infested, deteriorated, or otherwise harmful food substances.”
The lack of available data and scientific research necessary to accurately manage the risks associated with insect consumption in Italy has had a negative impact on food legislation, making it impossible to produce regulations capable of precisely governing the entire insect supply chain, including sales and commerce. In this complex and articulated context, and especially in the absence of specific regulations, in courtrooms, food habits and cultural identity have taken on legal relevance. By way of example, we can cite two court rulings that well illustrate the evolution of food beliefs through the changed judicial orientation that over time has contributed to a gradual de facto legal legitimization of novel foods. The first ruling was issued by the Rome Court, 12th section, in December 2011 (Codacons vs. Caffè Mazzini), and the second was issued by the Monocratic Court of Padua on January 17, 2017, following the issuance of the new Regulation (EU) 2283/2015.
On the other hand, the ruling issued a few years later by the Padua Court in 2017, also in light of the new novel food regulation contained in Regulation (EU) 2283/2015, took a different view. The case involved a catering company providing meals for a company canteen where a woman found a grasshopper in her dish. In this case, the judge accepted the catering company’s request for acquittal, accepting the defense’s argument: “the grasshopper is a healthy insect served in many cuisines around the world, including Europe, and therefore does not constitute a reason for alarm or danger to health.” A revolutionary ruling, not coincidentally issued by a court in Veneto, the first Italian region to sponsor insect-based cuisine. Analogously, we can thus consider that entomophagy is an expression of an increasingly multicultural society and, although it represents a recent legal issue for both European and Italian jurists, in the future it will also find its dimension in judicial orientation, including regarding the ethical and cultural aspects of food. Moreover, contemporary analysis of the Italian Constitution offers numerous insights to extrapolate “the right to sustainable and healthy food” understood as “the right to individual self-determination” under Articles 13 and 32 (right to refuse any nourishment) and Articles 2, 19, and 21 (freedom of thought and expression).
Cultural and Legal Resistance
in Italy
Despite the regulatory openness at the European level, Italy has shown strong cultural resistance to the introduction of insects into the diet. National legislation, rooted in Law 283/1962, remained anchored to principles of food hygiene and safety that prohibited the use of foods considered dirty or infested with parasites. The lack of specific scientific data on insects and the risks associated with their consumption further hindered the adoption of specific regulations to govern the insect supply chain.
The final question is : who will win this battle and, of course, what the sense to fight this battle ?
The final issue is that, despite a shared regulation for the benefit of people and health, different measures and approaches are emerging that seek to introduce controversial and unshared aspects. In Italy, regarding the issue of new foods – insects – a strong majority is opposed, making regulation and research in this field useless. n
Claudio Santarelli was born in Milan (Italy) on 1961, and he is the founder of his office in Milan, He graduated in Law from the University of Milan, Since April 1999, founder of the law firm “Studi Associati,” which he leads in Milan. The office corresponds, when necessary, with a network of Italian law firms and is part of the international network AEA. The office specializes in civil law, debt collection, bankruptcy and insolvency procedures, management of non-performing loans (NPL), commercial law, real estate law, tenancy law, due diligence and privacy. He participates as main speaker at numerous conferences and seminars in his areas of expertise. He is elected in the National Lawyers Congress Board.