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Yes to labelling sugar, salt and fat content, trans fats and calories, no to voluntary additional information on food at national level. These are only two of a whole number of voting results on future food labelling. For Consumer protection organisations, this result certainly contains some drops of bitterness.
This week, the European Parliament has determined its position on food labelling in a plenary vote. Some of the new provisions are to be welcomed; other regulations should be clearly rejected from a consumer point of view. Positive aspects are:

  • With regard to meat, the label must include the place of birth, the place of rearing and where the animal was slaughtered. The country of origin must be stated for milk products, fruit and vegetables.
  • The country of origin must be stated for all other food products if consumers might otherwise be misled about the actual country of origin.
  • The front of a food package must show the energy, salt, sugar and fat content. In addition to calorie information, the back of a product must contain fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt content as well as proteins, carbohydrates, dietary fibres and artificial and natural transfats per 100 gram food.
  • At the request of MEPs, nutritional values must be legible. There must be a clear contrast between text and background and the font must be large enough.
  • The identification of “glue meat” and analogue cheese and of food products that contain nanoparticles is mandatory.

Disappointing is the voting result with regard to the following points:

  • The 'traffic light' food labelling, i.e. colour-coded information whether a food product contains a large (red), a medium (amber) or a small amount (green) of sugar, salt or fat was rejected.
  • Additional voluntary regulations at national level to show information on the nutritional content will not be an option.
  • Alcoholic beverages will not be subject to mandatory information on sugar and calorie content.
  • Unpackaged food products too will not be subject to mandatory labelling.
  • The labelling of genetically modified food is also not mandatory. Here, however, a separate legislative text will be adopted.

The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats and the European Liberals were divided both with regard to their voting behaviour on 'traffic light' food labelling as well as concerning the text on deleting the option of additional voluntary regulations on labelling at national level (Chapter VII).


Source: European Parliament

There are clear differences of opinion concerning food labelling between the position of the European Parliament and the Council, hence a 2nd reading in the European Parliament is to be expected.

Text on food labelling accepted in the European Parliament