EU food commissioner seeks label truth

The Health, Food Safety and Consumer Affairs Commissioner, Mr David Byrne, will bring proposals to ensure nutritional information on food is scientifically based and clearly understood to the European Commission this week.

Mr Byrne said the move is aimed at ensuring consumers are "not fooled" by the health and nutrition labels on food.

The Commissioner's office gave a number of examples of where the new proposals could be required.

Claims such as "excellent for your organism", and "helps your body to resist stress", or "purifies your organism" are vague and often meaningless, according to Mr Byrne.

Some food labels contain factually incorrect claims while other carry labelling that is factually true but is misleading due the way it is expressed.

The example of "90 per cent fat free", may be true but it implies the product is low fat when it actually contains 10 per cent fat which is not a low fat content, the Commissioner said.

Mr Alan Reilly, deputy chief executive of the Food Safety Authority (FSAI), said accurate labels were required to "give Irish consumers sufficient information so they can make informed choices about the food they eat. That is where we want to see the revisions. Make it simple - so you don't have to have a degree in food science to understand the label."

Mr Reilly said the levels of awareness among Irish consumers as to what was contained within the food they were choosing could do with improvement.

"This is linked into the increase in levels of obesity. If people were to realise the relationship between sodium an salt and the fat content of some convenience food, maybe they would realise they could take a healthier option."

The new EC legislation on nutrition and health claims will complement existing nutrition labelling by ensuring that claims made on foods are scientifically substantiated and meaningful for consumers. It will come before the Commission on Wednesday, July 16th. The proposals are expected to go to before the Council of Ministers later this year and to come into force in 2005.