Food Information for Consumers
The European Commission has proposed a new regulation to cover the information
food and drink companies must put on labels. The Food Information Regulation will
bring together – and replace – all existing European laws covering food
labelling. It is hoped that having a single piece of legislation covering food labelling
will make it easier for governments, companies and enforcement officers to
understand and apply the labelling rules in a way that is consistent across the
European
Union.
The regulation, which is in draft form so is not finalised yet, also contains
some new measures. The most significant of these is a requirement for food and
drink products to carry information on-pack about how much of certain key
nutrients,
including fat, salt and sugar, are in the product. At the moment, putting
this
information on a label is voluntary (although in practice most of the food
and
drink products manufactured in the UK already do have nutrition labelling).
The new
regulation also says that this nutrition information should be printed
on the
front of the pack. And it states that the label should show how much of
our Guideline
Daily Amount of each individual nutrient is provided by the
product.
FDF welcomes this move to simplify food labelling legislation, and is also
pleased the European Commission agrees that GDA labelling is the most effective way
to
tell consumers about the nutritional composition of food and drink products
and
help them make informed choices. However, FDF is concerned that the draft
regulation also contains a clause saying that governments in the EU may also
introduce
voluntary 'national schemes' covering front-of-pack nutritional
labelling
in
addition to the required nutritional information. FDF believes this
could
result in
numerous different front-of-pack nutrition labelling schemes
operating
in different
EU member states. This would be at odds with the
intention of the
regulation,
which is to simplify labelling rules.
More Information
Last reviewed: 16 May 2008