{"id":407956,"date":"2024-11-25T19:20:22","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T18:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2024\/11\/25\/corte-conti-ue-su-etichette-alimentari\/"},"modified":"2024-11-28T20:09:45","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T19:09:45","slug":"eca-axes-europes-food-labels-too-many-and-confusing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/11\/25\/eca-axes-europes-food-labels-too-many-and-confusing\/","title":{"rendered":"ECA axes Europe’s food labels: too many and confusing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – Clear and safe information? Informed choices? In food labels, the European Union still has a lot of work to do<\/strong>.\u00a0In a dedicated report<\/a>, the Court of Auditors of the EU<\/span>\u00a0flunks the European food labelling system.<\/span>\u00a0The reason? Shortcomings and grey areas, as well as a system that is far from consumer-friendly and consumer protection-friendly. Although much information is provided for the benefit of everyday shoppers, Luxembourg auditors note, “the EU legal framework has significant gaps and weaknesses\u00a0in monitoring, reporting, control systems, and sanctions.”<\/p>\n

There is, first of all, a legislative problem. There are currently four main regulations in the European Union that govern the information listed on food products, as well as several other regulations related to specific characteristics, such as place of origin or additives. Mandatory information includes expiration dates, allergens, net quantities, and storage details.
\nAccording to the ECA, in addition to this information, “some producers and manufacturers take advantage of the lack of harmonization of norms and standards to enter unsourced, often unverifiable and sometimes false<\/strong> information.”<\/p>\n

Then, there is a practical problem, as\u00a0Keit Pentus-Rosimannus<\/strong>, the ECA member in charge of the report, explains in a nutshell. “Approximately 450 million consumers in the EU are thus defenceless against deliberately or unintentionally misleading messages<\/strong>.” Because the EU is a veritable jungle when it comes to seeking information about food. Europeans are\u00a0exposed to increasing claims,<\/strong> logos, slogans, labels and scores “that can not only be confusing but also misleading.” This\u00a0also applies to the traffic light indication, better known as the\u00a0“Nutri-score” that divides member states.<\/span>\u00a0In the EU,\u00a015 member countries have given total freedom to manufacturers<\/strong>, without indicating any type of labelling for food.\u00a0In 12 others, however, there are nationally recommended systems<\/strong>. Thus Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands use the traffic light system, Italy the battery system with indication in grams and percentage of calories, fat, sugar, and salt. Denmark, Lithuania, and Sweden, on the other hand, use an indication of the healthiest foods through a label depicting a keyhole. Finland uses a heart for everything considered good and healthy, and Croatia and Slovenia use a cloud and a balloon, respectively.\u00a0All products that may end up on each other’s shelves because of the difficulty in understanding what these symbols might represent.<\/p>\n

However, something is missing in this jungle, namely, what would really be needed. “Currently,” denounces the ECA report, there are no labels indicating the
\nprocessing
\nlevel of foods<\/strong>,\u00a0even though scientific data suggest that consuming large amounts of ultra-processed foods increases the risk of developing food-related diseases.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the report highlights “the lack of harmonization of rules on precautionary allergen labelling<\/strong>, the inadequacy of EU rules on legibility, and the absence of European rules on vegetarian and vegan labels<\/strong>,” for which there are no common standards. Hence, the call for the new European Commission to “urgently establish harmonized rules and regulations to alleviate consumer information problems.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luxembourg auditors call on the next European Commission to revamp the sector. Too much fragmentation and too few controls<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":222712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25705],"tags":[25746,28027,25982,26764,26787,29795,29796,26434,26910],"class_list":["post-407956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-consumer-rights-en","tag-consumers-en","tag-corte-dei-conti-europea-en","tag-food","tag-labels-food-en","tag-products-food-en","tag-greenwashing-en","tag-nutriscore-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407956"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":407998,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407956\/revisions\/407998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}