World Wine Trade Group Cape Town Statement on Regulatory Principles for Wine
World Wine Trade Group Governments endorse the following additional regulatory principles for wine.1
- Communication on enforcement activity: Regulators in exporting and importing countries should, in accordance with applicable laws and regulations, ensure they communicate with one another promptly when enforcement activity is being taken for wine in international trade. Governments should seek to establish reliable means for such communication in advance.
- Limits of detection: Where appropriate, when an analytical result for a substance in wine is reported as being below the limit of detection for a method, this should not be interpreted by Governments as indicating some presence of the substance.
- Expiration date labelling: In the light of product characteristics, Governments should exempt standard wine from production or manufacture date, expiration date, minimum durability date, or sell-by date labelling requirements, unless a minimum durability date or expiration date is required by applicable laws and regulations because of the packaging or container (for example, bag-in-box wines or individual serving size wines).
- Applying wine-specific limits. In the absence of specific regulatory levels or limits for a particular substance (whether adventitious or naturally occurring) in wine, or where a government is considering establishing such a level or a limit, each substance should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis taking into consideration relevant information such as levels of the substance in the wine, amount of wine consumed and toxicological information about the substance.
3 November, 2017
- These regulatory principles for wine should be read in conjunction with the World Wine Trade Group Tbilisi Statement on Analytical Methodology and Regulatory Limits on Constituents and Potential Contaminants in Wine.