Brussels considering 'Made in EU' labels, even for foods with imported ingredients.

"Made in the EU." That's how food and drinks produced anywhere in the European Union will be labeled under a proposal, prepared by European Union health commissioner Markos Kyprianou, who said that all goods for which final production takes place in the EU--including those which make use of imported resources--would have to be included.

The only exception would be for meat products, which would retain their national production labels, according to a report by Netherlands news agency ANP. Even before its official publication recently, the proposal drew fire.

According to Dorette Corbey, Dutch Labour Party member of the European Parliament, the proposal does not sufficiently take environmental concerns into account.

"I think that the designation 'Made in the European Union' is way too general," Corbey commented. "The trend is to look where a product originates from exactly. Transport over long distances is bad for the environment."

The "Made in the EU" proposal is part of a larger labeling proposal for food products. One of the other ideas in Kyprianou's package is aimed at tackling diabetes and obesity-related diseases by making it obligatory to provide information about the content of fat, sugar and salt on pre-packaged food products.

The proposal to have a "Made in the European Union" label is not new. In 2004, similar plans were scrapped by the commission because they were opposed by legislators in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands on grounds that it would be expensive to implement.