“Cannonau is bad for health”: wine like cigarettes, storm over Ireland
The Dublin government wants to put warning notices on bottle labels to tackle alcohol abuse. Coldiretti Sardinia: "Worrying decision". Foreign Minister Tajani: «Absurd»
Ireland, alcohol in the sights (Unsplash)
"Cannonau is harmful to health". Or: "Vermentino causes damage to the liver". And so not only for the typical wines of Sardinia, but for all Italian bottles - world excellence - exported to Ireland .
Indeed, the Dublin government intends to introduce – with the silent assent of Brussels – a notice on the labels of alcohol, similar to the one found on cigarettes. Alerts like: “Alcohol consumption causes liver disease” or “Alcohol and fatal cancers are directly linked”.
One way to combat alcohol abuse, a scourge that afflicts Ireland like other Northern European countries , with the risk that even the latter will follow suit, also requiring the affixing of the same warnings on bottles.
From Italy, however, the protest arises. "Ireland's decision to introduce a label for all alcoholic beverages, including Italian wine, is absurd," wrote the Foreign Ministry and Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani on Twitter. Who adds: «It is a choice that ignores the difference between moderate consumption and alcohol abuse. for this reason I will ask for the intervention of the EU Commission on the WTO».
Great concern also from Coldiretti Sardinia : «The European Union's green light for wine labels in Ireland - explains the association to L'Unione Sarda.it - represents a danger that risks opening the door to alarmist and unjustified Community legislation , capable of negatively influencing consumer choices ».
«An ideological approach - continues Coldiretti - towards a food that is fully part of the Mediterranean diet and has ten thousand years of history. The debate on this kind of indications started in 2021 when the European Commission had discussed introducing health warnings on the labels of alcohol bottles as part of the so-called "Cancer plan", in addition to detailed ingredients.
«They seem to us to be simplistic decisions - comments the president of Coldiretti Sardegna Battista Cualbu - which only create confusion between the excessive consumption of spirits which certainly hurts and must be stigmatized and the moderate and conscious consumption of quality products with lower alcohol content such as wine and the beer that is made in Sardinia and in the rest of the peninsula».
