Food Information for Consumers
The European Commission EC has proposed a new regulation to cover the
information
food and drink companies must put on labels.
The proposed regulation will consolidate and update two areas of labelling
legislation – general food and nutrition labelling - into a single text. . 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 EC proposal 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 EC proposal 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 EC 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 EC proposal 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: 06 Aug 2010