EHN Response to Commission Consultation on Revision of EU legislation on Food Information to Consumers

The European Commission adopted the “Farm to Fork Strategy for a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system” on 20 May 2020, as part of the European Green Deal. This strategy aims to reduce the environmental and climate footprint of the EU food system and facilitate the shift to healthy and sustainable diets. The strategy targets the entire food chain and describes, amongst others, the need to stimulate sustainable food processing and reformulation, to further empower consumers through labelling information and to reduce food waste.

The proposed revision of the FIC Regulation will address this need by considering:

• Front of pack nutrition labelling and nutrient profiling criteria to restrict claims: a proposal for EU harmonized and mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling and for the setting of ‘nutrient profiling’ criteria, which are thresholds of nutrients above or below which nutrition and health claims on foods are restricted.
• Origin labelling: An extension of mandatory origin indications to certain products.
• Date marking: A revision of the EU rules on date marking (‘use by’ and ‘best before’).
• Alcoholic beverage labelling: The introduction of mandatory indications of the list of ingredients and the nutrition declaration for all alcoholic beverages.