Food Control Laws
Austria has very strict laws regulating its food and drink industry. Every single piece of meat is quality-controlled and registered even when it is hunted game. The same strict rules are in place for milk and cheese. The Ministry for Agriculture and the Gesundheitsamt (Department of Health) regulate industry and farmers to make ensure the high quality level of food products, including assuring the quality of the international "made in Austria" brand.
Austrian consumers are typically suspicious of meat of foreign origin in particular, following the scare over BSE. Organically produced goods are also in high demand, and the Austrian government has introduced additional quality standards with stricter rules, such as BIO or AMA-Gütesiegel. A new standard is "Genfrei" or "Gentechnikfrei" meaning the food is free of Genetically Modified ingredients (GMO).
Following a 1985 scandal in which it was revealed that some Austrian wine had been adulterated (sweetened) with diethylene glycol (a type of antifreeze), the government introduced strict quality controls and now Austrian wine is renowned for its quality.
Read more about this topic: Austrian Cuisine
Famous quotes containing the words food, control and/or laws:
“One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Strabo (c. 58 B.C.–c. 24 A.D., Greek geographer. Geographia, bk. 1, sct. 2, subsct. 8.
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—William Cobbett (1762–1835)