European Breakfast Cereal Association
CEEREAL
The European Breakfast Cereal Association represents the breakfast cereal and oat milling industry in the EU.
ID: 62882208965-81
Lobbying Activity
Response to Setting of nutrient profiles
2 Feb 2021
CEEREAL welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on the European Commission’s Inception Impact Assessment regarding the potential revision of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers.
CEEREAL is the European association representing breakfast cereal producers and producers of oat milling products. Members of CEEREAL are companies (both SMEs and multinational corporations) as well as national associations in several Member States, the UK and Israel. Together, they produce more than 200 different varieties of breakfast cereals with different ingredients and cooking methods, reflecting and responding to the wide range of consumers’ preferences regarding their taste, diets, lifestyles, and age.
Breakfast cereals have a demonstratively positive effect on people’s diets and make significant contributions to intakes of fibre, whole grain and certain vitamins and minerals. At this stage, CEEREAL would like to share the attached comments, particularly regarding objectives on front-of-pack nutrition labelling and nutrient profiles.
Read full response7 Jul 2017
CEEREAL, the European Breakfast Cereal Association, representing the breakfast cereal and oat milling industry, welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on the Commission proposal for a regulation establishing mitigation measures and benchmark levels for the reduction of the presence of acrylamide in food.
CEEREAL member companies have been among the front-runners in understanding acrylamide in food when it emerged as an issue, then in devising and implementing mitigation tools and in initiating agronomic research.
We support the comments submitted by FoodDrinkEurope, and now focus exclusively on certain aspects of the Commission proposal in relation to breakfast cereals.
The breakfast cereals category is a very wide and diverse product category given the use of many cereal grains (alone or in combination) and processing platforms (e.g. different temperatures and moisture content combinations). Against this background and to ensure a practical approach, we would suggest some improvements to the categorization of breakfast cereals and the benchmark levels set.
We believe that the proposed benchmark level of 300 µg/kg (reduction from 400 µg/kg) for the category ‘bran and whole grain cereals and gun-puffed grains’ is impractically low, because it is based on data that is not representative. It it is well known that bran and whole grain products have a higher potential risk of acrylamide formation (compared to other breakfast cereals) due to the higher content of asparagine in the bran layer of grains.
While we understand the intention of setting ambitious benchmark levels, it is our understanding that the proposed level of 300 µg/kg is based on datasets containing products manufactured with different temperature processing conditions.
The muesli recipes can include steam treated whole grain and other ingredients with low acrylamide, so significantly diluting the final acrylamide result.
For this reason, we suggest that the current Indicative Value of 400 µg/kg should be maintained for the category ‘bran and whole grain cereals and gun-puffed grains’, and the category ‘muesli’ excluded from the scope of the proposed legislation.
The inclusion of muesli in any given category will skew the results, potentially distorting the values on the content of acrylamide.
CEEREAL fully supports the application of the measures included in the Commission proposal, and further strongly believes that agronomic research should become an EU-wide priority. This will unlock future availability of grains with lower level of asparagine (acrylamide precursor) to mitigate acrylamide formation in a wide range of baked foods.
Read full responseMeeting with Nathalie Chaze (Cabinet of Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis) and Kellanova
4 Nov 2015 · Contaminants, including acrylamide