Europe Puts Off Decision on Food Labeling

The poten­tial adop­tion of the Nutri-Score as a manda­tory European Union front-of-pack label­ing plat­form has been removed from the cur­rent E.U. leg­isla­tive agenda.

The lat­est news was announced by a European Parliament mem­ber (MEP) dur­ing the national meet­ing of Coldiretti, an agri­cul­tural asso­ci­a­tion, in Rome.

“The European Commission has can­celed its leg­isla­tive pro­posal for an E.U.-wide food label­ing sys­tem which includes Nutri-Score as one of the poten­tial can­di­dates,” said Paolo De Castro, mem­ber of the agri­cul­tural and rural devel­op­ment com­mis­sion of the European Parliament.

According to De Castro, the with­drawal from the agenda means that the mat­ter will not be dis­cussed again before 2024, when elec­tions are due.

“This means that this com­mis­sion and this par­lia­ment will not be able to pro­pose or to turn any pro­posed food label into law,” he added.

The delay in the leg­isla­tive process for a har­mo­nized and manda­tory food label­ing sys­tem for the entire European Union does not come as a sur­prise after com­ments from Italian and European politi­cians last month.

A deci­sion on the mat­ter was first expected by the end of the year and was recently post­poned to the sec­ond half of 2023 . The main rea­son for the delay resulted from sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences among E.U. mem­bers in the approach to food label­ing.

While sev­eral dif­fer­ent label­ing plat­forms have been taken into con­sid­er­a­tion, Nutri-Score was long con­sid­ered to be the front-run­ner after wide­spread vol­un­tary adop­tion by a hand­ful of coun­tries, includ­ing France and Germany and major food pro­duc­ers.

Nutri-Score is a traf­fic-light-style front-of-pack label that uses a com­bi­na­tion of five coor­di­nated col­ors and let­ters to rate how healthy a pack­aged food item is based on its fat, sugar, salt and calo­rie con­tent per 100-gram or mil­li­liter serv­ing. The ​“Green A” indi­cates the health­i­est option, and ​“Red E” denotes the least healthy.

The announce­ment from De Castro comes days after the advi­sory body of the French Ministry of Health, the National Conference on Health (CNS), pub­lished an opin­ion ask­ing for the imme­di­ate adop­tion of Nutri-Score through­out Europe.

The CNS experts called on the European Commission and the European Parliament ​“to pro­tect the health of peo­ple liv­ing in the European Union, present and future gen­er­a­tions, and to adopt a manda­tory nutri­tional label­ing, that is under­stand­able by as many of our cit­i­zens as pos­si­ble, espe­cially the most vul­ner­a­ble, and that has been sci­en­tif­i­cally proven to be effec­tive.”

The CNS added that Nutri-Score’s adop­tion should hap­pen ​“by the fore­seen dead­line (2022)” as ​“manda­tory Europe-wide nutri­tion label­ing.”

Before the CNS released its opin­ion, 23 MEPs wrote an open let­ter to the European Commission, appear­ing to crit­i­cize Nutri-Score while ask­ing for a dif­fer­ent approach.

According to the sig­na­to­ries, whichever nutri­tional label is cho­sen should be ​“sim­ple” but not ​“sim­plis­tic.” It should also have to avoid any ​“judg­ment of value of the foods” and offer ​“infor­ma­tion on calo­ries and nutri­ents per serv­ing.”

The let­ter also asked the com­mis­sion to con­sider how the label assesses non-nutri­tional con­tents, such as whether or not a food is processed.

According to De Castro, the de facto delay in the E.U. adop­tion process is good news, as it will allow more time to under­stand the dif­fer­ent opin­ions on the sub­ject.

“As a mat­ter of fact, I do not think we need a sin­gle har­mo­nized sys­tem,” he added. ​“There are so many cul­tural dif­fer­ences and dif­fer­ent lifestyles to find a com­pre­hen­sive sys­tem to include them all suc­cess­fully.”

• Il Sole 24 Ore
• Ansa
• Nutri-Score