False Food Labeling - Can you trust your dish?

Speaking in Strasbourg yesterday evening Jim Higgins Fine Gael MEP for Ireland North West outlined to European Commissioner Vassiliou the latent dangers behind many food products claiming health benefits.

Jim Higgins also aired his disappointment at the delayed implementation of the Regulation on Nutrition and Health Claims Made on Foods which will not meet its implementation deadline of December 2010.  Commissioner Vassilliou confirmed that the European food Safety Authority (EFSA)[1] had attributed the delay to the over whelming number of claims to be examined, the EFSA have to date received some 44,000 nutrition claims for analysis - when only a few hundred had been anticipated.

Jim Higgins called on the Irish government to adopt temporary measures to fill the current lacuna in food labelling in Ireland and to protect Irish consumers from being lured to purchase unhealthy and harmful products in what he described as "shameful and fraudulent business practices.  At present there seems to be no repercussions for those deliberately misleading the consumer, this is simply not acceptable."

When implemented the parliamentary regulation will lay down harmonised rules on nutritional claims - which is of course a welcome change - however I disagree with the "completeness of information" approach adopted by the EFSA whereby consumers will be bombarded with information on continually decreasing packed sizes and so consumers will be forced to decipher minuscule text.[2]

"At present it appears that food labelling is marketed towards those who hold a PHD in nutrition - the average shopper spends 7 seconds reading the label of any product and so an obvious warning system such as traffic light labelling would be the most appropriate system."

"A lot of scientific jargon/buzz words are thrown around as advertisements claim various health benefits.  These health claims are extremely convincing, they aim to, and often succeed, confuse the consumer and often completely mislead the shopper as to the true nature of what they are buying.  "By placing excessive emphasis on technical truths the truth can be obscured."

"The majority of Irish people want to make a healthy food choice, but this is becoming increasingly difficult, as the wit of one person is pitted against multinational corporations with teams of scientists all eager to induce purchase."

"Worryingly 61% of Irish people are presently over weight /obese and more than 2,000 premature deaths occur annually due to obesity[3].  I realise that misleading food labelling is not entirely to blame, for these shocking statistics, but false food labelling is a large contributor to this very serious health problem which affects over half our population - this should be enough to shock any government into action."

[1] To whom the task of assessing health claims had been delegated

[2] EU Environmental legislation policy encourages more compact packaging.

[3] As per " Can we Count on our Health" by Michael McHale The Irish Times - Tuesday, July 7, 2009



Contact: Aoife Kearney +32 22837843