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Brussels, 30 september 1994
Euro Coop objectives for EU food labelling policy
At the moment, there are a lot of debates on the information that is required on a label. Euro Coop's Food Policy Working Group has drawn up a set of principles against which existing and new requirements should be tested. These principles are based on the good practice of Co-ops across Europe.
- Information on the label should be directed primarily at consumers. Storage instructions, for example, should as far as possible be instructions to consumers and not instructions to retailers.
- The label should be informative for consumers.
Whilst consistency is important, labelling laws should nevertheless note that not all information is relevant to all products. Some products will require additional information and others will require different information. It would not for example be sensible to require the complete information on a nutrition label on jam when many of the nutrients would have to be marked "nil" or "trace".
- The law should be user-friendly.
All labelling requirements should be based on the 1979 Directive. There should not be labelling requirements in, e.g., Marketing Standards Regulations, compositional standards Directives, or hygiene Directives.
- The law should not prevent producers and retailers from providong additional consumer information if they so wish. It is at present illegal to give more information on a wine bottle than that which is required by the Wine Regulations, e.g. information on the units of alcohol in a glass of the wine.
- The dates of implementation should be chosen to meet the needs of producers and retailers. There should be longer periods in which existing label stocks can be used up, especially where the changes to the label merely give the same information in a different way, as happened with the Nutrition Labelling Directive.
- Proposals for new labelling requirements should note the fact that there is limited space on the label.
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