Spotlight on food labelling plans

Food labels should include mandatory nutritional information, including on artificial trans fats and the country of provenance, Environment Committee MEPs said this week. The committee amended draft EU legislation to ensure that labels are ‘legible, do not mislead, and provide the information that consumers need to make choices’.

The draft legislation, voted at the second reading by the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee on Tuesday would change existing rules on information that is compulsory on all labels, such as name, list of ingredients, ‘best before’ or ‘use by’ dates, specific conditions of use, and add a requirement to list key nutritional information. MEPs also want an indication of the ‘date of first freezing’ for frozen unprocessed meat, poultry and fish.
They agreed that key nutritional information, such as energy content, and amounts of fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugars, protein and salt, must be indicated in a legible tabular form on the back of the packaging. But to this list they added artificial trans fats (the inclusion of which the Council of Ministers would have made voluntary). All this information would have to be expressed per 100g or per 100ml, and also per portion, and could also be accompanied by guideline daily amounts.

To ensure the labels are legible, MEPs list a wide range of factors to be taken into account by the Commission, which will have to establish binding rules.
The CIAA (Confederation of food and drink industries of the EU) says food manufacturers welcome the outcome on nutrition labelling, but goes on to say that the labelling of trans fats (TFAs) is a ‘step too far’.

“Based on scientific findings from EFSA, the total intake of TFAs today in most EU member states is below the WHO recommended level of 1% dietary energy,” says a CIAA spokesman. “As a result, EFSA has confirmed that TFAs do not pose a source of public health concern/ The CIAA supports the view that trans fats should be labelled on a voluntary basis.”