Food in the spotlight — “So, it begins…”
By: Cesare Varallo
Tags: Lawyers, Food, Food And Drink, Foodies, Food And Beverage

I am starting this newsletter, generously acknowledging the fact that LinkedIn allows me to do so, in exchange for my users’ attention. This is the usual trade-off you have to face with online platforms and social media: and you need to live with that, together with the fact that if they change the rules, you have to adapt your strategy.

Truth to be told, this platform proved to be also an amazing source of information, enriching networking and brilliant ideas over the years: used correctly, it is by far the most useful social media around, together with YouTube. So, I’ll decide to give this a shot.

Since 2013 we offer you valuable information for free via foodlawlatest.com, and we always will. Hopefully from a new and improved web platform, once ready.

The last 2 years have been almost as challenging as fulfilling. Our company grew in staff as well in revenues, but if 2020 — despite COVID — was a smooth ride, in 2021 we were literally building the rocket while going to the moon. Therefore, this is a good occasion to both cheer for that and beg your forgiveness for every mail I answered late. We heavily invested in IT tools, education, and young talents to try to structure ourselves, and we are now riping the fruits of such efforts.

I guess this year you all had the chance to work with part of my amazing team: without them, I won’t be here. In the last months, they really doubled their efforts to raise the bar and keep our services’ quality excellent as usual.

From time to time, I’d like to share in this newsletter also interesting books, ideas, or tools that made my life and business better. Entrepreneurship — also if on a relatively small scale — is a never-ending learning process; and even if I have no ambition to bring you the “truth”, I am sure that sharing part of my fortunes (and most of all my misfortunes), might be very useful to younger readers.

That said, let me share some of the topics we are facing recently:

China: overseas manufacturing facility registration took a good share of my sleep. GACC Decree 248 and 249 are meant to be in force by the start of the new year. If you export to China and your manufacturing facility is not registered yet, is definitely the moment to be worried. You can find more info on the Malaysian authority’s website (in English) or on the USDA GAIN database, typing “overseas manufacturing registration” in the research field and selecting “China” as the country of interest. Once you understand what to do…guess what? the portal is fully in Chinese!

Italy: we are very active regarding the environment recently. From 1st Jan 2022, all packaging material marketed in Italy (and of course the food products wrapped with it) shall bear on the label, or provide via QR Code or other electronic means — suggesting on the label that such info are available online — two elements: the identification code of the material under EC Decision 129/97 and, in case the pack is destined to consumers, the sorting information (e.g. Plastic waste, Paper waste), to allow proper disposal. At the same time, we finally implemented in Italy the so-called “SUP” Directive (Single-Use Plastic) but exempted from the field of application biodegradable and compostable plastics in an open clash with the EU Commission and the Directive text. Typical Italian!

In the meantime, I saw and shared an interesting video about seaweed production and booming demand:

and started to move forward with our relatively new YouTube channel, publishing a snippet about accreditation, standards, and trust, taken from a recent webinar organized with our best friends Bert Popping and Francois Bourdichon:

That’s all, for now!

Cesare