Food labels are in for even more changes and is it worth it?

Food labels are required for all prepackaged foods in Australia and New Zealand. Labels are there to provide consumers with information about the food contained in the package, to enable them to make decisions about whether to purchase that food, how to prepare it and how long it will last.

Food labels are extremely complicated, with specific requirements for; the ingredients, the nutritional panel, the weight / volume, the manufacturer / supplier details, allergens, cooking / reheating, descriptions, shelflife, recycling information and storage instructions.

All of these requirements involve a lot of work by the manufacturer / supplier; testing of shelflife, testing for the nutritional panel, checking and double checking the ingredients, allergens and Country of Origin.

This is not even considering the requirement for the Healthy Star Rating, which shows by a series of stars the compliance to the required rating system. Once again significant testing is required to ensure that the correct ratings are shown on the label.

As of the beginning of July 2018, this became more complicated still with the new requirement for Country of Origin labelling, with words and pictures. The whole process involved in having the right information on the label about the amount of the food that is Australian or not, is mindblowing.

Now labels are about to have even more information added to them, with the push to change the recycling information to show exactly what can be recycled and what can’t. This will be done using a series of pictures to show what part of the packaged can be recycled and how.

If this isn’t enough, with the Senate Enquiry into Australian Obesity about to bring down it’s report, there is a strong move to require a picture on the label showing the number of teaspoons of sugar in the food. Surely there are other changes that could be made within the current requirements to do the same thing, as an example; modify the nutritional panel or the ingredient list to show the exact amount of sugar in a food.

These aren’t labels any more, with the amount of information required on them, they are libraries.

It is absolutely vital that consumers have the information they need to make an informed choice about the food they are buying and eating, but consideration has to be made for the manufacturers and the massive amount of work and money which is involved in ensuring that their labels meet all the legal and business requirements.

Calls for changes and additions to food labels have to weighed against the onerous task meeting the requirements for those labels.