Council Regulation (EC) No. 820/97 establishing a system for the identification and registration of bovine animals and regarding the labelling of beef and beef products.

The Regulation aims at ensuring stability in the market of beef and beef products by improving the transparency of the conditions for the production and marketing of the products concerned particularly as regards traceability. It establishes the rules to be followed by operators or organizations, as defined in article 13, for the labelling of beef at the point of sale in such a way as to provide information concerning the origin or certain characteristics or production conditions of the labelled meat or of the animal from which it derives. Each operator or organization shall submit a specification indicating (a) the information to be included on the label; (b) the measures to be taken to ensure the accuracy of the information; (c) the control system to be applied at all stages of production and sale; (d) in the case of an organization, the measures to be taken in relation to any member which failed to comply with the specifications. The approval of any specification shall be subject to the assurance of the competent authority, obtained on the basis of a thorough examination of its components. Article 15 establishes the conditions for the validity of any approval granted by a third country. Moreover, the label shall contain the following information: (a) Member State, third country or holding of birth; (b) Member States, third countries or holdings where all or any part of fattening took place, with partial fattening having to be specified; (c) Member State, third country or slaughterhouse where slaughter took place; (d) identification number and sex of the animal; (e) method of fattening or other information relating to feeding; (f) information on slaughtering, such as the age at slaughter and the date of slaughter or the period during which the beef was matured (f) any other information which the operator or the organization wishes to indicate and to which the competent authority concerned has agreed. A compulsory beef-labelling system shall be introduced which shall be obligatory in all Member States from 1 January 2000 onwards. However, this compulsory system shall not exclude the possibility for a Member State to decide to apply the system merely on an optional basis to beef sold in that same Member State. The labelling system provided for in this Regulation shall apply until 31 December 1999 (art. 19.1).