Europe’s grocers resist food labelling proposals

EUROPE’S grocers and supermarkets say they do not want to be forced to label food with nutritional information.

Instead they want to give data on what is in food in their own ways, even if this varies from one store to another and from one country to another.

The European Commission will propose new labelling laws later this year in an effort to educate people about healthy eating and reduce obesity.

But Senator Fergal Quinn says this should not be made mandatory. He is the president of EuroCommerce that represents major supermarket chains across Europe including Tesco and Marks and Spencer.

He said governments and not the retailers must educate the consumer about healthy eating.

“If people do not understand about good nutrition, they will not benefit from labelling. For example the amount of calories we eat has not changed in the past 30 years but we are taking less exercise,” said Mr Quinn, who founded Superquinn in Dublin. EuroCommerce, whose members conduct about a billion transactions a day throughout Europe, say that retailers should be able to decide for themselves how they give nutritional information.

“Competition between retailers is the best way as when one retailer sees another doing it better, he will improve. Standards will be far higher this way,” said Mr Quinn.

The organisation favours having four pieces of nutritional information on the front of a pack and eight on the back, all saying what proportion of the daily intake of nutrition the food supplies.

But even this cannot be mandatory as it depends on the size of a pack and on the fact that fresh fruit and vegetables are frequently loose. The US has had labelling for 10 years but without public education we can see that this does not address the obesity issue,” he added.