Conference throws light on new EU food labelling standards

DORTMUND and COLOGNE -- With the new Food Information Regulation (FIR), the EU creates more safety for the consumer: from the end of 2014, food packages have to contain more comprehensive information on the packaged goods than before. For the industry this means a fundamental reorientation. Existing data has to be reviewed and brought up to date, some information even have to be investigated for the first time, to meet the requirements of the European Union.

At the International Fresenius-Conference "The New Food Information Regulation"
held from 20 to 21 March 2012 in Cologne, industry experts discussed all the important alterations in the field.
Future product information would not only have to be more extensive, but also
needs to be easy to understand and read for the consumer, Antoine de Brosses (Hogan
Lovell, France) made clear. One of the most important changes is that there will be a
minimum font size for the printing of food information on packaging material which
would also result in consequently minimized space on the label available for
marketing purposes. In general, the regulation would foresee a greater variety of
mandatory information, Mr de Brosses explained further.

In addition to nutritional information, the freezing and/or use-by-date, specific information such as used substitutes or contained nanomaterials would be compulsory from now on. But despite big progress in many areas, the new regulation would still leave some important questions open including the use of pictograms on the packaging, nutritional information on alcoholic beverages or the labelling of trans fats, he stressed.

Origin information: consumer's expectations decisive
A highly relevant provision of the new regulation is the identification of the goods' origin country or origin region. The origin has to be indicated explicitly if there was a likelihood that consumers could draw false conclusions from the product name or product type due to missing information, Martin Holle (Unilever, UK) explained. According to the regulation, "origin" refers to geographical regions, in which key parts of the product's processing take place and which contribute to the characteristics of the good.

This would not just apply to the location of production, but also to the origin of the raw material, Mr Holle made clear. The labelling would therefore crucially depend on the consumer's expectations.

If the place of production and the origin of the raw material would be not identical, both the origin of the primary ingredient as well as the origin of the final product would have to be labelled, he also said.

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