Sid Maher
June 13, 2013
The Australian
A RADICAL new health star-rating system will be printed on the front of all food packages as part of a planned federal government campaign to cut obesity.
The plan will be put to state and federal ministers tomorrow but threatens to provoke a row with the food and grocery industry, which has written to state health ministers expressing concerns about the scheme.
Dairy farmers also are understood to have concerns about the food ratings system, which treats milk differently from soft drinks and confectionery.
The new scheme has been developed across the past two years after the controversial traffic light food labelling system was dumped by the government in late 2011.
A final report on front-of-pack labelling was finished last month, recommending a star scale from half a star to a top rating of five stars.
The Australian understands the working group on food packaging chose to use half-star steps because the increments were small enough to encourage food manufacturers to make their products more healthful to achieve better ratings.
The front of food packets will have an icon showing the number of kilojoules in a product and nutrient information on saturated fat, sugars and sodium.
The system would be trialled as a voluntary code, but a mandatory code has been included in proposals put to state and territory ministers for agreement at tomorrow’s meeting of the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council.
One plan being considered as part of the scheme is to put “Be treatwise” logos on the front of confectionery and soft drinks, and back of pack consumer messages about the role of treats in the total diet.
The new star-rating system will be backed by a “social marketing campaign” run by the Australian National Preventive Health Agency. The plan includes extensive market research to explore the effect of the new system on consumer behaviour.
The working group argues that the front of package labelling system should “serve the purpose of highlighting nutrients that contribute to the risk of poor population health outcomes, such as saturated fats, sodium and energy, as well as highlighting positive nutrients which can have certain health benefits”.
Under the plan, food manufacturers will be given a 12-month transition period to finetune the system and three years to implement it.
The new scheme is estimated to cost the food industry about $50 million across the first three years of operation based on an uptake of 5000 products, but this could double to $100m if the uptake were to increase to 10,000 products.
Priority packaged food for the new system is expected to include breakfast cereals, pre-prepared convenience meals, snacks such as potato chips, biscuits, juices and drinks, canned products, dairy products, muesli bars and bread.
The new star ratings system would apply to all packaged, manufactured or processed foods presented ready-for-sale by retailers. But it would not apply to baby formula, drinks with an alcohol content above 1.15 per cent and kava. Under the plan, health foods will be able to list a single “positive” nutrient icon on the front of packets.
The labels will be able to include the words “high” for a positive-nutrient and “low” for a risk nutrient if they meet Australian and New Zealand food guidelines.
The Australian understands the Australian Food and Grocery Council has called for a delay in implementing the new system because of concerns over how the star system is calculated, the cost of changing labels, whether there will be adequate promotion of a public health announcement, and that the government has not yet done a cost-benefit analysis.
Others in the food processing industry believe the scheme should be implemented and would cause minimal disruption.
The final report on the plan recommends changes to how nutrient information is expressed on food packets. Energy in kilojoules will be able to be expressed in terms of the percentage daily intake but other nutrients will not be expressed in those terms. But the percentage daily intake measure will not be able to be used on products that are sold to children.
Whereas nutrient information and energy had previously been expressed in a “per serve” form, under the new recommendations when a pack is expected to be consumed in one sitting, the star system will be based on a “per pack” measure. Soft drink bottles up to 600ml would also be measured based on the whole bottle.
Subscribe to our free mailing list and always be the first to receive the latest news and updates.