Food labels, now with added information.

Proposed new labelling laws on nutritional content will be good not only for the public but for the future financial health of the industry, says Ian Lindenmayer, Managing Director, the Australia New Zealand Food Authority.

After six years of work and many rounds of consultation with industry, consumers, health authorities and scientists, ANZFA's review of food standards has been completed and Health Ministers will meet in Canberra on 24 November to consider the proposed joint Code. The proposed joint Code provides benefits to both consumers and the food industry.

If the Ministers support our recommendations, there are three main changes that consumers will notice on food labels.

Firstly, all packaged food, not just those that make a nutrition claim like 'lower fat' or 'reduced salt', will contain nutrition information about how much fat, protein, kilojoules, carbohydrate and salt is in the food. This is good news for people watching their health as diet-related disease, such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity, is increasing.

Secondly, nearly all food labels will also show the percentage of key ingredients. This will enable consumers to see how much of that key ingredient is in their food, for example how much meat is in their meat pie or fruit in their jam.

Finally, there will be more information for allergy sufferers. Currently not all foods that affect people with allergies or food intolerances are labelled. The proposed joint Code will ensure all of the main foods which may cause allergies ( including peanuts and other nuts, seafood, fish, milk, gluten, eggs and soybeans ( will be declared on the label. There are also stricter provisions ensuring warning or advisory statements for products that can cause other adverse reactions.

In past months the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC), has voiced strong opposition to mandatory nutrition information panels and percentage labelling, claiming that current voluntary provisions are adequate, that the mandatory imposition of labelling will be costly, and that the information provided on the labels would be meaningless to most consumers.

Our consultation process tells us otherwise. While we agree that there are a large number of products with voluntary nutrition information on labels we have found that those products with high levels of fat or salt, or other nutrients that consumers don't want, rarely carry nutrition labels. For consumers to make an informed decision about buying healthy products they need information on all food labels, including the less healthy products.

As we have seen from recent media debate, there is strong consumer support for more information on labels. A survey by Newspoll commissioned by Sanitarium has indicated that 91% of Australians want to see sugar content in nutrition labels, 92% fat content and 85% fibre content. Also Kellogg and Sanitarium, both of whom are members of the AFGC, have put out advertisements in the national press supporting detailed nutrition labelling.

In fact, here we have two members of the AFGC calling for stronger labelling than even ANZFA has proposed.

The AFGC has also claimed in a report from KPMG, which incidentally the AFGC has still not provided in full to ANZFA, that these proposed labelling changes will cost the food industry at least $400 million. ANZFA has not found evidence of this during the six years we have taken to develop the new Code. During this period we have carried out over seventy regulatory impact statements for individual projects, as well as one overarching one for the whole Code, to ensure that the proposed changes do not impose unnecessary costs on industry.

There are two elements that could create cost for industry in this new labelling regime. The first is in obtaining the information. Here ANZFA is ensuring that even small business can easily access what they need for nutrition labelling. That is why we are currently not proposing a detailed breakdown of fats on labels until this information is published in 2001. Incidentally, we are not currently proposing to provide details of sugars, apart from their inclusion in carbohydrates as a whole. This is because the latest science shows that sugars are not strongly linked with health problems where the real culprits are fat, energy and sodium. The Dietitians Association of Australia has issued a media release this week saying just that.

Information about percentage labelling is readily available for industry as it is based on the ingoing weight of ingredients. Every food manufacturer knows the quantity of ingredients ordered and allowances for seasonal variation have been made by allowing the labels to say 'at least'.

The other element of cost in labelling is the design and printing of new labels. Manufacturers have informed us that they regularly change their labels, either for a new promotion or simply because they run out and need to print more. For this reason we have allowed a two year period for the changes to be made so that manufacturers can change their labels during their scheduled reprint. In this case costs are minimal.

While there may be some minor costs in labelling changes, the proposed joint Food Standards Code has considerable financial benefits for industry in lifting restrictions. Until now the food industry has had to cope with a large amount of regulation which restricted its ability to respond to changing consumer tastes, but served no purpose in protecting consumers. The proposed joint Code has reduced duplication of legislation and regulation and removed unjustified prescriptions. It allows the food industry to innovate in meeting the needs of consumers and to remain competitive. It also helps to open up markets, moving to a single Australian and New Zealand market and improving access to world markets by ensuring the reputation of Australia and New Zealand as quality suppliers of safe food.

Backgrounders available on the ANZFA website: