European Commission publishes roadmap for new Food Information to Consumers Regulation

The revision will tackle front of pack nutrition labelling, nutrient profiles, origin labelling and date marking. Stakeholders can comment on the roadmap until February 3, 2021.

As part of the Farm to Fork Strategy (F2F), the Commission announced that it would take a number of actions to reduce the environmental and climate footprint of the EU food system and facilitate the shift to healthy and sustainable diets. This will be done through the revision of the FIC Regulation. These actions include:

• Harmonised mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling;

• The setting of ‘nutrient profiles’ restricting the promotion (via nutrition and health claims) of foods that are high in fats, sugars and/or salt;

• The extension of mandatory origin or provenance indications to certain products;

• A revision of the EU rules on date marking (‘use by’ and ‘best before’).

With this roadmap, the Commission said that it will prepare an impact assessment in 2021. The impact assessment will assess and compare the potential impacts of the different policy options described in the roadmap. A legislative proposal is foreseen for the fourth quarter of 2022

The Commission has identified foods for which consumers have particular interest to know where they are coming. These include potatoes and tomatoes.