Purpose
This consultation has been prepared by the Food Regulation Standing Committee (FRSC) at the request of the Australia and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation (the Forum) to support consideration of regulatory and non-regulatory options for labelling of sugars on packaged foods and drinks for sale in Australia and New Zealand.
The desired outcome of this work is that food labels provide adequate contextual information about sugars to enable consumers to make informed choices in support of the dietary guidelines.
FRSC has identified six policy options (in addition to the status quo) that are proposed to achieve the desired outcome. These policy options are not necessarily mutually exclusive and more than one option could be adopted. The options are:
Further information about these options is detailed in the Public Consultation Regulation Impact Statement which is available to download from the 'Related' section below.
Scope and terminology
The scope of this consultation is limited to information about sugars on labels of packaged foods and drinks. Food and drinks not required to be labelled (e.g. a slice of cake served at a restaurant, or a soft drink served in a glass at a restaurant) are out of scope.
It is also relevant to note that in this consultation, the following terminology:
New Zealand and Australia share a joint system for food labelling which is overseen by the Australia and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation (the Forum). The Forum is responsible for developing domestic food regulation policy in the form of policy guidelines.
At the 24 November 2017 meeting, the Forum agreed that information about sugars provided on food labels does not provide adequate contextual information to enable consumers to make informed choices in support of dietary guidelines and agreed to further examine regulatory and non-regulatory options to address this issue.
Stakeholder submissions to this consultation will be used by FRSC to identify a preferred policy option to recommend to the Forum regarding potential changes to food and drink labels in relation to sugars.
Submission Instructions
Submissions closed at 11.59pm AEST on 19 September 2018. The Food Regulation Standing Committee reserves the right not to consider late submissions.
Depending on the volume and complexity of submissions received, it is expected that the Decision Regulation Impact Statement with a preferred policy option and implementation mechanism will be presented to the Forum in late 2018.
Depending on the Forum’s decision, industry or government (depending on the implementation mechanism) would then undertake to introduce the preferred policy option(s) (assuming that it is not to maintain the status quo).
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