spiritsNEWS October 2019

Consumer information on nutrition information and ingredients listing

In March 2018, the European alcoholic beverages sectors committed jointly on the provision of nutrition information and ingredients listing for consumers. The self-regulatory commitment was presented to the European Health Commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis. In its sector specific annex to the joint document, spiritsEUROPE committed to ensure that, by the end of 2022, information on the nutrition and ingredients of all spirits sold in the EU will be made available to consumers (online and/or offline) and to provide the Commission with regular progress report in the interval.

The commitment of spiritsEUROPE was further formalized in the Memorandum of Understanding on the provision of nutrition information & ingredients listing of spirit drinks sold in the EU (MoU), which was signed in the presence of EU Health Commissioner Vytenis Andruikaitis in Paris on 4 June 2019. In July, we received a letter signed by Commissioners Andruikaitis and Hogan (for Agriculture) welcoming our commitments and encouraging all our companies to join for on-time delivery. The commitment is to ensure that by 31 December 2022, 66% of products placed on the EU market will provide energy information on-label and list of ingredients online.

Since July 2019, we have made significant progress in reaching our objective. More members have announced their intention to sign the MoU before the end of the year, which is the case already for our Finnish National Association (SAJK), who signed on 9 October.

At the same time, we are actively assisting companies by providing help and support and answer any implementation questions they may have. An Implementation Guideline has been made available with information on the recommended unit of consumption, tolerance levels for the indication of nutrients as well as the calculation of the energy value of spirit drinks, etc. The Implementation Guideline will be extended to cover further aspects of the MoU in the next months and a Question & Answer document will be compiled before the year end. As to the commitment to provide consumer information on-line, via an e-label (e.g. a barcode or a QR-code) , we continue our cooperation with GS1 Europe. Several meetings took place to jointly define key attributes and the data-sharing principles that should go into the database.

Last but not least, waiting for the outcome of our work with GS1 which will provide the information for a given bottle, we have updated www.responsibledrinking.eu to provide - as committed in the MoU - a list of ingredients including the raw materials in addition to energy information per 100ml and per serving size (30 ml) and the full nutrition declaration and information on the production process of all 47 spirit drinks categories legally sold in the EU. Members are translating this website into their national languages to make consumer information available to as many people as possible in various languages. 

 

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