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EU's food labelling laws are full of gaps, says EU Court of Auditors

Food labels are confusing consumers and misleading them with false claims, according to a new report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA).

“Companies can be very creative in what they put on packaging, and EU rules have not caught up with a constantly evolving market,” explained ECA member and the audit’s lead Keit Pentus-Rosimannus. “[…] there are hundreds of different schemes, logos and claims that people need to decipher,” she added.

The extensive review noted that the essential information is there, including ingredients lists and identification of allergens, but updates and promised reviews are out of kilter with some of the claims food companies are making.

Gaps have emerged allowing greenwashing to spread, for example, and for foods classified as high in fat, salt of sugar (HFSS) to also carry beneficial health claims. “EU legislation can lead to consumers being fooled,“ the ECA wrote.

Fixing FIC

NGOs including the European consumer rights organisation Foodwatch – which was interviewed by the ECA for its report – welcomed the findings as “a validation of the demands for transparent, honest and comprehensible consumer information it has voiced for years”. Food labels “shape [the] eating habits of millions of people and therefore have a massive impact on the health of European consumers”, added Suzy Sumner, head of the Brussels Office for Foodwatch International, as she called for the promised updates to the Food Information to Consumers (FIC) regulation.

The 2011 FIC Regulation is one of a set of rules on food information, which also include laws setting out the requirements for specific food products (wine, eggs, honey, olive oil, and food intended for young children, for example). Mandatory information includes the name of the food, ingredients and allergens, as well as origin labelling and nutrition declarations. The focus is on health and safety.

The FIC harmonised existing rules and strengthened the food labelling requirements across member states, but many of the deadlines for updated rules have long since passed. The European Commission should have taken action on 11 topics across the FIC and the 2006 claims regulation, but has only managed to achieve four of them.

Most notable and controversial of the missed deadlines is the one relating to front-of-pack nutrition labelling. NGOs, many scientists and some political alliances see them as a critical part of efforts to tackle growing disease rates. The harmonisation of these labels across the bloc has been the subject of heated debate for years, however.

Far from harmonious

Currently, there is more confusion than ever about the fate of NutriScore – the approach that appeared to be the front-runner as an EU-wide mandatory front-of-pack labelling scheme. Olivér Várhelyi, the health commissioner designate, offered only vague responses in relation to food labelling in his written answers to MEPs recently. The message was that work should continue on food labels but through non-legislative measures.

There are also worrying signs from the food industry. Danone has for example removed the NutriScore from all of its products following an algorithm update that gives some of its sweetened drinks a worse score. “We expected better from a company like Danone, which until recently campaigned to make NutriScore mandatory in Europe until the update (quite rightly) affected some of its flagship products,” Serge Hercberg, professor of nutrition at Université Paris, who led the team of researchers that created NutriScore, told Ingredients Network in September.

The ECA report is seen as a potentially important intervention, calling for a harmonised approach and for the Commission to up its game to help consumers make better-informed decisions. “The Commission needs to either propose NutriScore as the harmonised and mandatory label across the EU or clear the way and enable member states to introduce a mandatory NutriScore on the national level”, said Sumner at Foodwatch.

Dominic Watkins, head of consumer sector at law firm DWF, said: “The general takeaway from the report appears to be that if there is not harmonisation then there is an issue. That does not necessarily follow. There are increasing amounts of information on pack,” he added, “but provided that the mandatory information meets the legibility standard in the law, it is up to the [food business] what it does [in relation to] voluntary information. That information does not need to be there”.

EcoScore?

Environmental claims, including the use of carbon footprint labels or images of grazing cows, have also spread quickly across supermarket shelves as brands look to sell their sustainability stories to increasingly eco-conscious consumers. In a Commission study, 80 % of the webshops or food product advertisements included eco-claims. However, the Commission has also found that more than half of green claims by companies in the EU were vague or misleading, and 40% were completely unsubstantiated.

New laws under the green claims and empowering consumers for the green transition directives are looming to clamp down on such claims. This includes the evidence needed to make such claims (another point on which there is intense debate).

There is some support for integrating environmental impacts with nutritional information in a more holistic front-of-pack ‘ecoscore’. This would seem “ideal” but would not be easy, as Rabobank senior consumer foods analysis Julia Buech explained. The single label “could liberate consumers from a dizzying array of labels/claims and bring the ultimate convenience of curation. It could also solve the (hypothetical) issue where consumers may need to choose between health (for example NutriScore A) and the environment (ecoscore E),” she said. “But that’s all still up in the air. For the moment, cracking on with NutriScore – or another FOPNL – while controversial, would indeed be a good starting point.”

Watkins said the ECA report provides a neat “shopping list” for the new Commission to determine its first steps and resurfaces the debate about nutrient profiles – and specifically if it is misleading to have a health and/or nutrition claim on a product that is also high in sugar.

Ultra-complicated

There is also reference to ultra-processed foods – another hot potato for policymakers. Currently there are “no labels that indicate the processing levels of foods, although scientific evidence suggests that consuming high quantities of ultra-processed food increases the risk of developing diet-related diseases”, the ECA noted.

The Commission accepted all the ECA’s recommendations, with a target date of 2027. This includes improved reporting on food labelling, addressing the gaps in the FIC and claims regulations and strengthening member states’ checks on voluntary labels and online retail. However, it added that “food business operators are responsible for ensuring compliance with EU law” and “the responsibility for enforcing the [EU’s] rules lies with the member states”.