Review of Food Labelling Law and Policy
– Unilever Australia Response
Unilever Australasia manufactures food, home and personal care products and is a market leader across dozens of categories for foods, household and personal care products with brands such as Continental, Lipton, Streets, Flora, Bertolli, Rexona, Sunsilk, Omo/Persil and Dove, just to name a few.
As an Australian and New Zealand manufacturer and marketer of consumer products across a range of categories we clearly see that it is in the best interests for both industry and consumers to ensure that products are appropriately labelled to meet consumer needs for information in the marketplace and to ensure they have access to further information on more detailed areas of interest through call lines and websites
As a company we are active members of the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) and the New Zealand Food and Grocery Council (NZFGC), in addition to a number of relevant sector specific industry organizations:
Food and Beverage Importers Association;
Australian Beverage Council Ltd;
Allergen Bureau.
We have participated in the development of these industry organization submissions, and fully support those submissions in addition to providing this company-specific submission.
Section A: Response to Review
Unilever would like to thank the Review Panel for this excellent broad ranging Issues Consultation Paper as a means to draw out the views of different stakeholder groups and interrogate the various aspects of food labelling policy and law to clearly identify the key drivers for food labelling information and to inform the development of principles for an effective regulatory framework.
From a global perspective Unilever is committed to provide adequate information on its products that allows the consumer to make an informed choice. In line with this commitment to consumer information, Unilever believes that several media need to be used, including websites to cater for all types of legitimate information requests.
1. COAG reform agenda
Unilever fully support this review resulting from the business regulatory reform agenda of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) for reform of Food Regulation and appreciate the opportunity to input information to support this comprehensive labelling review using an evidence based approach and without compromising public health and safety.
2. Involving NZ
One of the key benefits for the food industry across the Tasman in recent years has been the Treaty establishing Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) and the adoption of an Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code (ANZFSC) where considerable harmonization has been achieved. We therefore strongly encourage this Australian review to include consideration of New Zealand as any further departure from this harmonization is highly undesirable, introducing cost and complexity to trans Tasman business operations.
As a member company we have input into the NZFGC submission and fully support the points made in this submission.
3. Overarching Food Labelling Policy
The area of food labelling has operated without a supporting overarching framework and has experienced change through a range of different measures resulting in fragmented mandatory labelling requirements for individual issues.
The comprehensive list provided in the AFGC submission provides many examples where FSANZ, and in some case parliamentary bills, have been put forward to address particular requests for further mandatory consumer labelling.
We therefore support this review as a means to form the foundations for an overarching food labelling policy framework.
4. Foods as ‘Consumed Products’ and ‘Consumer Products’
We support the AFGC recommendation to provide clear demarcation of labelling foods as a ‘consumed product’ and foods as a ‘consumer product’.
This proposed separation of food safety issues versus consumer information issues then sets a clear framework to allow for prioritisation within the separate areas.
We use this opportunity to present examples of other products within our consumer products portfolio to demonstrate how labelling information is regulated for these products:
Personal care products (including cosmetics) have a demarcation in that the chemicals used to make these products are regulated by the chemicals regulator, National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS) whereas the labelling for these products is regulated by ACCC standards under the Consumer Safety Standards; and
Household cleaning products - the chemicals used to make these products are regulated by NICNAS, whereas ingredient labelling for these products is through a recently developed industry-led voluntary ingredient disclosure initiative.
5. Appropriate Regulatory Measures
There are a number of different forms of regulatory options that can used to deliver consumer labelling information:
- through compliance with mandatory labelling requirements;
- through adherence to co-regulatory Codes of Practice;
- through development and adoption of best practice guidance for labelling; and
- through adoption of company labelling positions optimised to meet identified consumer needs.
Examples of effective best practice guidance for labelling that have been developed by co-ordinated industry groups are:
Food Industry Guide to Allergen Management and Labelling; and
AFGC Daily Intake Guide
Date Marking Guide
Unilever, as a member company of AFGC, has actively participated in the development of these best practice guidance materials and uses these to assist in optimising consistent delivery of labelling information.
6. Other Information Channels
In line with our commitment to consumer information, Unilever believes that several channels need to be used, including websites and carelines, to cater for all types of legitimate information requests.
It is important not to underplay the significance of the availability of further information from companies in addition to labelling applied directly to food products. There are many cases where mandatory labelling of individual products will not be adequate to explain complex issues – for example a company sourcing position on sustainable palm oil.
Companies manage communication on complex issues such as this using a multi-level approach as has been detailed below under Section 9 Prioritisation of Information.
Brand owners are in business to build brand equity and brand loyalty and meeting consumer needs for both product quality and product information are key.
Companies have invested significantly to communicate with their consumers, using the information provided by consumer contacts to drive consumer information strategies.
Please see below a summary of consumer contacts over the past few years for Unilever (this information has also been provided as part of the AFGC submission):
Issue / 2008 contacts / 2009 contacts / 2010 contactsGeneral nutrition inquiries / 1345 / 42% / 1030 / 39% / 377 / 41%
Gluten / 528 / 16% / 463 / 18% / 150 / 17%
Environment/recyclability / 359 / 11% / 334 / 13% / 110 / 12%
Allergens/sensitivities general / 303 / 9% / 274 / 10% / 86 / 9%
Caffeine / 269 / 8% / 215 / 8% / 71 / 8%
Product sourcing / 117 / 4% / 71 / 3% / 23 / 3%
Animal testing / 82 / 3% / 58 / 2% / 14 / 2%
Vegetarian/Halal / 74 / 2% / 91 / 3% / 43 / 5%
MSG / 54 / 2% / 37 / 1% / 13 / 1%
Dairy and Peanut/Treenut / 50 / 2% / 32 / 1% / 14 / 1%
Other / 13 / 8 / 3
Total / 3194 / 2613 / 904
We review our consumer contacts to determine areas of interest to our consumers on a regular basis and develop information to address these. It is in brand owners best interests to ensure that the information needs of their consumers are adequately met.
The information derived from these reviews informs best practice labelling for our products in addition to contributing to the additional information made readily available to consumers on request through our free call numbers and websites.
This is in addition to implementing available industry best practice guidance materials such as Allergen labelling guidance and Date Marking guidance.
This information is provided to demonstrate the routine methods we currently use to support our consumers’ information requirements in addition to both the mandatory labelling requirements and industry organisation co-ordinated best practice guidance.
7. Role of Interpretation, Administration and Enforcement
Integration of the contributing roles of interpretation, administration and enforcement into the regulatory process is essential for improved functionality of the regulatory system and achieving improved consistency in labelling.
We are actively supportive of the current stakeholder consultation on Centralised Interpretive Advice as we see this as a benefit to improving consistent implementation of regulatory requirements.