About a year ago Osem successfully got Heinz ketchup declared in Israel as "tomato dressing" rather than ketchup, due to some ancient regulation of how much tomato content must be in the mixture to legally use the word ketchup.
Heinz had to relabel all their bottles in Hebrew to say "metabel agvaniot" - tomato dressing - instead of saying ketchup, as the Heinz recipe for ketchup includes less than the mandated 10% tomato content.
Tomato Dressing no more! Heinz can now call their flagship product ketchup once again! #ketchuplivesmatter
Ministers Moshe Kachlon and Yaakov Litzman signed a new directive today canceling the requirement of 10% tomato content in ketchup to qualify for use of that name. The justification for the change is that the requirement was ancient and nowhere else is 10% required - not in Europe and not in the USA. Removing this requirement will help the competitive market, allow new companies to be imported and to be sold with that name.
sources: Ynet and Globes
I wonder if Osem will drop the level of tomato content in their ketchup now that they no longer need to stick to the previously-required 10%, or if they will keep it and use it in their marketing in some way such as more tomato = better ketchup.
Thank you Israel, for declaring Heinz Ketchup as real ketchup.
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