New European Food Labelling Regulations Put On Hold

the news that are coming from EU are not good...

read below a text by Alan Reilly, Deputy CEO of Food Safety Authority of Ireland
-----------------------
------------------------------

The proposal for new food labelling regulations has been put on hold after a decision by the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee of the European Parliament to postpone a vote on the draft legislation. The net effect will be a delay until the election of a new European Parliament; in reality it will be a year or more before the new regulations see the light of day. The real losers are consumers who must wait even longer for laws which will require improved information on the nutritional content of the full range of processed foods on the market. While the efforts of some food industries to voluntarily provide nutrition information beyond current legal requirements is very welcome, it has resulted in the use of a variety of formats and in the inconsistent nature of the details provided. The direct result can be to mesmerise consumers in their efforts to choose or compare products as all of the nutrition information on a label is not readily comparable. Making healthier choices can be a frustrating business.

Nutrient Profiles

Further bad news for consumers is the continuing debate around the establishment of nutrient profiles for foods. Nutrient profiling is the classification of food according to the content of key nutrients - total fat, saturated fat, trans-fatty acids, sugars and salt. According to the EU rules (Regulation 1924/2006) on health and nutrition claims, these nutrient profiles are designed to underpin the use of authorised claims. Claims should only be permitted on foods that have the appropriate nutrition profile and health claims will not be permitted on foods that contain high levels of nutrients such as saturated fat, trans saturated fat, salt or sugar with potential adverse health effects. The deadline for the establishment of the nutrient profiles, January 2009, has already passed and as time progresses the chances of achieving consensus on an approach that will protect consumers seems more and more remote.

Proposals for the new rules appear to have narrowed the number of nutrients to be considered for profiles from the original five to three - namely, saturated fat, salt and sugar. While saturated fat is a reasonable surrogate for total fat, it does not reflect the trans-fatty acid content of foods. The combination of proposals to exclude trans fats from the nutrition information on food labels and the omission of trans fats as a limiting criteria in nutrient profiles, will undermine consumers ability to reduce their intake of these harmful nutrients.

Further erosion of the potential for nutrient profiles to protect consumers is the establishment of a growing number of food categories where different nutrient threshold limits apply. While it is reasonable to permit higher threshold levels for dairy foods or meat compared with fruit and vegetables, the recent proposal to develop special food categories for biscuits seems to defeat the whole purpose of profiles. Finally, the fact that proposed threshold limits are higher than current nutrient content levels for many food categories (e.g. 5% saturated fat for breakfast cereals), will damage the incentive that nutrient profiles could have for stimulating the re-formulation of food products to a healthier composition.

The increased democratisation of the legislative process at European level is welcome, but when the net result is long delays or stalemate between the different institutions, the consequence should not be to put consumers at a disadvantage.

--------------------

related links

Half of all consumers ignore food labels

competition for new logo for organic products