Foodlaw-Reading Dr David Jukes, The University of Reading, UK
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Food Law News - EU - 2021

Commission consultation, 13 December 2021

LABELLING / CLAIMS – Commission Consultation: Revision of rules on information provided to consumers for alcoholic beverages / Facilitating healthier food choices – establishing nutrient profiles

The Commission has opened three consultations relating to labelling issues for public comment:

• one concerns alcoholic drinks,
• one concerns nutrient profiles to restrict the use of nutrition and health claims on food, and
• one aims to ensure better labelling information to help consumers make healthier and more sustainable food choices and tackle food waste, by proposing to: introduce standardised mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling extend mandatory origin or provenance information for certain products. revise the rules on date marking (‘use by’ and ‘best before’ dates).

Background:

• For alcoholic drinks, an initial consultation on the Roadmap was held from 24 June 2021 to 22 July 2021. For the news item on this site, see: 24 June 2021 LABELLING - Commission consultation: Revision of rules on information provided to consumers for alcoholic beverages. This new consultation runs from 13th December 2021 - 7th March 2022. An on-line form is available for responses. For more details, see: Commission consultation - labelling of alcoholic drinks.
• For nutrient profiles and for better labelling information, initial consultations on the Roadmap were held from 23 December 2020 to 4 February 2021. For the combined news item on this site, see: 23 December 2020 LABELLING - Food labelling - revision of rules on information provided to consumers. This new consultation runs from 13th December 2021 - 7th March 2022. Separate on-line forms are available for responses. For more details on nutrient profiles, see: Commission consultation - establishing nutrient profiles. For more details on better labelling information , see: Commission consultation - revision of rules on information provided to consumers

Although on different pages, the following details are common for the three consultations:

Target audience

This public consultation aims to collect the views of EU and non-EU citizens as well as of professional and non-professional stakeholders regarding initiatives for revising the EU legislation on food information to consumers.

Why we are consulting

This public consultation covers different initiatives for revising the EU legislation on food information to consumers. This revision concerns front-of-pack nutrition labelling, origin labelling and date marking, which are key actions of the Farm to Fork Strategy, and the labelling of alcoholic beverages as announced in Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. Another initiative concerns the setting of nutrient profiles to restrict the use of claims on foods that do not meet some nutritional quality, as announced in the Farm to Fork Strategy. With this public consultation, citizens and stakeholders are invited to share their views and experiences on the main obstacles they are facing in these food labelling areas and on possible ways to overcome these obstacles.

Responding to the questionnaire

You can contribute to this consultation by filling in the online questionnaire. If you are unable to use the online questionnaire, please contact us using the email address below.