Your views matter

Food Solutions Editor, Bob Salmon writes, "I am pleased to report that the Agency has listened to the views sent in by our members. I have had long talks with their senior officers both in London and in Brussels and the Agency has now adopted a position which would exempt small food businesses from some of the most expensive, and frankly unworkable, proposals of the Commission. Both the Agency and the Commission listen and take notice of our comments.

 We have therefore also put our members’ points verbatim to the Commission through our offices in Brussels . Not only that but I am due to address a delegation of MEPs in the next few weeks to pass on our members’ views. If we all ignore these consultations we will get what we deserve. That could mean some very expensive new rules and many caterers and retailers having to provide detailed analyses of their products."

Food Solutions in Brussels

Bob addressed the meeting of MEP's in Brussels in October. He was the only UK representative permitted to speak.

He put the small business point of view across. The regulation as it stands would be very costly to the industry and some aspects would be unworkable in practice - nutrition labelling of loose foods/restaurant meals.

 Labelling Regulation Consolidation

The draft regulation does attempt to consolidate around 40 pieces of legislation into one. This should help both consumers and businesses.

Food Solutions consumer survey indicated the majority of consumers did not understand dates on labels or egg marking.

The EC proposal covers both pre-packed and loose foods. It would mean that every meal served would have to have a declaration of what allergens there may be in it and how much carbohydrate, salt, fat, saturated fat etc. were in each portion. All quantities must be in grams or litres. You must declare the possible health impacts of all foods. The document goes on for 85 pages and says several times that it is a simplification. In fact it adds several extra duties. If it comes in with all its clauses you would suffer.

Get your views to those that really matter.

List of Food Solutions Products

Food Labelling Proposal latest

A new proposal is due to be tabled by Renate Sommer, by early September 2009. Food Solutions will take appropriate action to represent members' views, when it is published.

Labelling review so far

The FSA held a consultation on the Draft Regulation on The Provision of Food Information to Consumers.

The full text of the draft (Jan 08 version) can be viewed here.

Food Solutions responded to the FSA consultation and also submitted the response direct to the Commission.

Brief details of the findings of the FSA meeting on 11th June 2008 are here.

The UEAPME response to the Commission on the labelling proposal is now available.

Why this labeling regulation is important

The regulation aims to simplify existing legislation, but also extends it. Some areas are unclear.

If full allergen and nutrition labelling were adopted for all foods, could you comply?

Testing every product in your range would be expensive, yet you would need to have accurate values for your labels.

If Member States were permitted to demand specific nutrition labelling schemes, such as the FSA traffic lights, costs would be high, especially for those not already labelling in colour. There could also be an impact on exports if certain countries made their scheme mandatory - more than one panel of nutrition information to satisfy different countries.

In Austria, it is estimated that it will cost their industry at least 400 million euros a year. They have a population one tenth that of Britain . In proportion it would cost us up to three billion pounds a year in labelling alone.