The European Union is yet to green light the ingredients that can be used in Romania's popular minced meat dish called 'mici'.

The technical commission which was supposed to give its vote on the list of food additives than can be added to traditional food products has decided to delay the vote until June.

At stake is the use of sodium bicarbonate – E500 – which is used in the mix for mici. According to Ziarul Financiar, several countries informally opposed the use of sodium bicarbonate – Spain, Denmark, Sweden, while Germany recorded an abstention.

The vote would have resulted in a rejection of the ingredient which defines the Romanian mici, so based on the informal data about the vote, it was postponed.

This keeps the Romanian 'mici' under a questionable status, as officially they are ' illegal'. But Romanian and European authorities have agreed not to start checking production units this year, which allows producers to use the same recipe until a EU decision is made. Meanwhile, the Romanian Government has stressed out that the mici are safe to eat.

Romania is trying to get the traditional food label for the mici, and to do this, it needs to make sure all ingredients are approved by the EU. Should the EU decide against some of the ingredients currently used in the 'mici', producers would have to change the recipe, and potentially alter the taste which made the 'mici' so famous.

The local market amounted to some 22,000 tons of mici in 2012. Over the summer, Romanians usually go barbecuing and mici is one of the traditional barbecue products.

editor@romania-insider.com