Prosecco exports from Italy to UK fall for first time in 10 years due to Brexit
Italian agricultural group Coldiretti also blamed UK food labelling systems
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Your support makes all the difference.Exports of prosecco from Italy to the UK have fallen for the first time in more than 10 years, according to Italian agricultural association Coldiretti, which blamed uncertainty around Brexit for the decline.
The group reported a 7 per cent drop in the number of bottles exported to Great Britain, citing the “tensions caused by Brexit negotiations”, although it said more than a quarter of prosecco consumed outside of Italy is opened in the UK, ahead of the US.
Coldiretti highlighted concerns over UK food labelling legislation, and said the traffic light system, which uses red, amber or green stickers to denote how much fat, saturated fat, sugars and salt a product contains, was unfairly keeping Italian products off shelves.
The Italian organisation said this system means almost 85 per cent of products made in Italy could be “unjustly” rejected, because the stickers indicate only the “generic presence of a certain type of substance”, without taking into account portion sizes.
This “leads to misleading conclusions” by promoting, for example, carbonated drinks made from an unknown recipe, while “rejecting long life elixirs such as extra virgin olive oil but also Parmigiano Reggiano or Prosciutto di Parma”.
Coldiretti also said that with less than a year until the UK leaves the EU, “an agreement has not yet been reached on the recognition and protection of food products with designations of origin on the British market after Brexit”.
This could create the risk of a flood of imitations hitting the market, the group warned.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph reported that Italian producers also blamed the slide in sales on ‘fake news’ stories about so-called prosecco smile.
British dentists warned that drinking too much prosecco could lead to a visible white line below the gum - the ‘prosecco smile’, which indicates the beginnings of tooth decay, because it contains high levels of sugar and acidity.
However, the claims were slammed by Italians, with the country’s agriculture minister Maurizio Martina describing the reports as “fake news”.
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