Scrapping the small print

Lorraine Eve, head of regulatory affairs at Ashbury Labelling, examines how the EU regulation on the provision of food information to consumers will affect the industry.

A seismic shift in how food and drink companies label their products was ushered in with the introduction of new regulation at the end of last year.

EU Regulation No. 1169/2011 on the Provision of Food Information to Consumers marks a wholesale change in the industry’s approach to labelling, with companies now forced to comply with mandatory food labelling guidelines, rather than applying their own voluntary food labelling requirements.

While the regulation is not a complete surprise, having been in the pipeline for several years, it effectively requires the majority of food labels currently on the market to be redesigned – resulting in serious cost implications for manufacturers and retailers.

Two major aspects of the regulation are mandatory nutrition declarations and the setting of a minimum font size. In fact, while just these two changes alone are likely to prompt major redesigns, the wide-ranging regulation spans everything from allergen and date of durability to country of origin labelling.

There are potential environmental repercussions of the minimum font size rule, with manufacturers opting for larger packs in order to create space for labelling information, which could lead to additional packaging waste. This could prove particularly problematic for companies producing products with multi-lingual labels.

Because the regulation represents such a radical overhaul of the current rules, manufacturers have been granted a three-year transition period in which to become compliant. Companies have until 13 December 2014 to redesign product labels, with any product labelled and placed on the market prior to this date allowed to be sold until stocks of that item are exhausted.

Industry challenge

While the new regulation poses challenges, there are steps manufacturers can take to minimise time and cost constraints.

The key to minimising costs is to ensure relabelling takes place as part of a normal redesign lifecycle.

This might not be practical for small and medium-sized companies, meaning that many of these are likely to shoulder a disproportionate amount of the costs incurred by the food industry.

Even so, the cost of not complying could be greater still, should this result in an enforcement challenge. That’s why companies should seek advice on the new rules at an early stage. Indeed, this is particularly important as the regulation is so wide-ranging.

That said, however, companies shouldn’t match the speed with which they seek advice with a mad rush to become compliant. That’s because much of the regulation is yet to be finalised – which means developing new labels too quickly could result in needing to carry out further redesigns when the final rules are published.

One example of correct declaration formatting still being debated among industry representatives and government authorities is rules on allergen labelling. The majority of UK manufacturers and retailers currently provide information to consumers on the presence of allergens by way of a ‘contains’ box, which is separate from the ingredients list.

However, under the new EU regulation, allergenic ingredients must be clearly indicated in the list of ingredients, emphasised through a typeset that clearly distinguishes them.

It still isn’t clear exactly how this should be done – whether manufacturers should use bold, italics, brackets or capital letters, or whether an asterisk could be used to highlight allergenic ingredients. It’s also unclear whether the ‘contains’ box information should be retained or removed.

Manageable

There’s no doubt that the new regulation poses challenges to food manufacturers and retailers. Firstly, it spans many aspects of labelling and requires the majority of labels on the market to be redesigned. Secondly, it still requires a great deal of clarification.

However, we should acknowledge the importance of providing consumers with clear information so that they can make informed decisions about their diet.

The regulation should also result in a more consistent application of labelling rules, making the marketing of food products across Europe simpler. In fact, this is one of the more important benefits it offers, given the increase in distance selling.

Overall, the regulation represents a manageable challenge that offers enough consumer health benefits to make the changes worthwhile.