ASIAN TOMATO CONCENTRATE INVADES ITALY: ONE THIRD OF CHINESE IMPORTS ARE PRESERVING TOMATOES. PAY ATTENTION TO LABELS!

In 2007, the total value of food imports from China has nearly doubled (+78%), while exports to China have remained more or less stable due to barriers that still block “Made in Italy” staples like prosciutto, fruit and vegetables.

This is what has emerged from the study by Coldiretti based on ISTAT data relative to national foreign commerce for the first quarter of 2007. It demonstrated a strong commercial deficit for food with “Made in Italy” exports making up just 12%.

And, Coldiretti emphasized, among the arrivals from the Asian giant it is significant that tomato concentrate, which represents almost one third of imports (31%), has registered a record import increase of 150%. This is a particularly worrisome situation for Italy because it was unable to obtain a norm for the mandatory printing of the origins of a product on labels, thus the risk that non Italian goods will be sold as Italian made.

The agri-food deficit with China is compounded by the fact that there are strong barriers at a bureaucratic and administrative level that, despite repeated proclamations to the contrary, still have not been removed and continue to impede the arrival of products like prosciutto, kiwis and apples on the Chinese market. And Coldiretti noted that this is significant because there has been a boom within the internal market, with Chinese almost doubling their consumption of fruit over the past ten years.