(October 2014)
Executive summary
In 2009, the then Australian and New Zealand Ministerial Council for Food Regulation (now known as the Australian and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation (Forum)) agreed to a comprehensive independent review of food labelling law and policy. An expert panel, chaired by Dr Neal Blewett, AC, undertook the review and the panel's final report, Labelling Logic: Review of Food Labelling Law and Policy (2011) (Labelling Logic) was publicly released in January 2011.
Recommendation 13 in Labelling Logic states: That mandatory declaration of all trans fatty acids above an agreed threshold be introduced in the nutrition information panel if manufactured trans fatty acids have not been phased out of the food supply by January 2013.
A number of countries have implemented regulatory and/or non-regulatory approaches to reduce trans fatty acids (TFAs) in the food supply, such as mandatory labelling in the USA and Canada (when TFAs are above a certain level), mandatory limits on the trans fatty acid (TFA) content of foods in Denmark and industry guidance for meeting voluntary targets on the TFA content of foods in the UK. In 2003, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended that TFAs contribute less than 1% of dietary energy and in 2009 indicated that consideration should be given to the TFA intake of population subgroups that have higher intakes than the population mean.
In 2011, the Forum provided a response to the Labelling Logic report which considered Recommendation 13 in association with two other recommendations (Recommendations 12 and 14) also relating to nutrition information panel declarations along with ingredient listing. The Forum asked FSANZ to provide technical evaluation and advice on the three proposed changes to the nutrition information panel and ingredient list together. However, FSANZ has progressed its technical evaluation and advice on each of the three recommendations separately, because of the diverse nature of the issues involved in each recommendation.
In the government response to Recommendation 13, the Forum noted that industry had already achieved a significant reduction in TFAs and that the level of TFAs in the Australian diet was well below the at-risk level. The Forum questioned whether a deadline for a complete phase out of TFAs was actually required.