A majority of MEPs on the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety welcome the Commission’s intention to impose simplified nutritional labelling of foodstuffs on the front of packaging in order to inform consumers and help them make healthy food choices. However, they are divided on the form this future labelling will take as part of the EU’s ‘Farm to Fork’ sustainable food strategy.
For the time being, everything is open, Commission representative Alexandra Nikolakopoulou (DG Health) told them on Thursday 25 June.
“We want a mandatory system, but we are not recommending any specific timeframe. The nature of the harmonised system will depend on a debate with all stakeholders and will be the subject of an impact study”.
Two reports published at the same time as the ‘Farm to Fork’ sustainable food strategy guided the debate. The first, on front-of-pack nutrition labelling, concludes that the use of different systems in the internal market risks leading to confusion and undermining consumer confidence, which is why stakeholders are in favour of harmonisation.
The second report, on the evaluation of nutrient profiles in the Health Claims Regulation, confirms the relevance of nutrient profiles for avoiding false or misleading claims and notes a synergy between front-of-pack labelling and nutrient profiling. “The Commission wants to address these two elements at the same time and come to a coherent approach by the end of 2022”, said Mrs Nikolakopoulou. She added that “the Commission will make a specific proposal on this labelling in 2022”.
We are reopening a ten-year old debate, said Bas Eickhout (Greens/EFA, Netherlands), denouncing “efforts by the food industry lobby” to delay harmonised front-of-pack labelling. “If nutrition labelling is relevant, why wait until 2022?” he asked.
Peter Liese (EPP, Germany), said front-of-pack labelling should be taken into account, but should not point the finger at the industry for nutritional problems.
Like Biljana Borzan (S&D, Croatia), Bas Eickhout, and Véronique Trillet-Lenoir (Renew Europe, France), some MEPs are strongly in favour of ‘Nutriscore’, as they see nothing more effective than this “simple, user-friendly and science-based” labelling system. Trillet-Lenoir’s question on the future consistency between nutrient profiles and the sustainable food labelling announced for 2024 went unanswered.
On the other hand, Silvia Sardone (ID, Italy) is resolutely against ‘Nutriscore’. She wondered “how it is possible that a system designed to combat obesity could be used for marketing purposes” by some supermarkets and feared that olive oil, for example, would be badly rated.
Mick Wallace (GUE/NGL, Ireland) questioned whether nutrition labelling could “promote healthy choices if we don’t attack companies that promote processed foods by practising ‘healthwashing’”. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)