European Parliament votes on controversial report for food labelling Regulation
16 March 2010
**Comment piece by EAS**
by Miguel Fernandes da Silva
The European Parliament (EP) this month voted on one of the most debated topics in the area of food policy. The Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee of the EP (the ENVI Committee) voted on its report with more than 800 proposed amendments, which provides its views on what should be included in the European Commission’s proposal for a Regulation on the provision of food information to consumers (food labelling).
The Committee adopted an amendment which states that the mandatory nutrition declaration must include information on the amounts of 10 items:
· energy
· fat
· saturates
· sugars
· salt
· protein
· carbohydrates
· fibre
· natural trans fats
· artificial trans fats
Besides the issue of trans fat content as well as the relevance of the distinction between natural and artificial trans fats which are in themselves controversial issues, the most worrying point is that an amendment also adopted would require the mandatory nutrition declaration of the 10 items to be indicated on the front of pack!
This, combined with yet another amendment requiring a mandatory indication of the energy content also on the front of pack, in the bottom right-hand corner in a font size of 3mm and surrounded by a border, would lead to very full fronts of packs indeed.
This was most certainly not the intention of the ENVI Committee but was the result of the way the votes were carried. The general understanding from the meeting where the vote took place is that this will most likely be corrected during the final vote of the EP in plenary, currently scheduled for the third week of May 2010.
However, two additional amendments adopted exempted small packs from the need to provide the mandatory nutrition declaration of the 10 items on front of pack:
- The first clarifies that food packaging the largest surface of which has an area of less than 75 cm2 at its largest surface would be exempted from the mandatory nutrition declaration;
- The second lays down that packages with the largest printable surface of less than 80 cm2 should only have to label the name of the food, allergens, net quantity, date of minimum durability or ‘use by’ date, energy content.
As expected, the Committee rejected the proposal for a mandatory font size that would apply to all mandatory food information. Instead, it requested that the Commission adopt guidelines on legibility, in consultation with the relevant stakeholders.
Before the voting it was difficult to predict which way the ENVI Committee would vote on two of the most controversial issues, nutrient profiles and EU-wide traffic light labelling. However, a small majority carried an amendment deleting nutrient profiles from the Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation. A number of amendments proposing an EU-wide traffic light labelling scheme were rejected by even smaller majorities. As these were voted on by small majorities, the outcome of the vote of the entire EP in May remains uncertain at this stage. There is no doubt that these two topics will be at the centre of the negotiations in the European Parliament in the upcoming weeks.
In another development, the attempts to remove provisions from the Commission’s proposal that allow for the development of additional national voluntary schemes on nutrition declaration were not successful. If these provisions remain in the final regulation it would, for example, allow the UK to maintain its recommendation for front of pack signposting (traffic lights) and could lead to different additional voluntary systems being introduced in different Member States.
This Committee vote is only the first step in a long decision-making process during which anything can still happen, and the May vote will certainly help clarify what the European Parliament’s position is. However, the European Parliament has yet to take into account the views of the Council (EU Member States), which tend to be significantly different on a wide number of issues including the font size, front of pack labelling, nutrition declaration, origin labelling and the nutrient profiles.
It will be interesting to see how this proposal will develop and it will no doubt be the subject of many controversial debates in the next year.
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