Evidence of meeting #40 for Health in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was school.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:30 a.m.
Head, Nutrition Division, Food Standards Agency UK
There's separate legislation for baby foods, which defines the levels of salt, sugar, and other nutrients allowed in those foods. That's mandatory legislation. What we're talking about here is the voluntary provision of information on what I guess you'd call family foods.
10:30 a.m.
Chair, UK Headquarters, Food Standards Agency UK
Could I just make one point? I think what we're trying to do with this traffic light system is catch the consumer at the point at which they're making a purchase from the shelves. Research shows that you spend about 10 seconds buying a product, and that includes getting to the right point on the shelf. So we're trying to make something that is absolutely simple, clear, and very quickly accessible. But we also see it as a partner to the more detailed nutritional information, which you can find on the back of the pack.
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
But the baby foods aren't on the shelves, meaning that, with your regulation, as such, baby foods don't even get to the shelves for people to choose. Is that what you're saying about the regulations?
10:30 a.m.
Head, Nutrition Division, Food Standards Agency UK
Yes, that's right. The legislation on baby foods is quite prescriptive about the levels of nutrients that are allowed in those particular specialist foods. That is statutory legislation. So all the foods on the shelves must meet those restrictions.
10:30 a.m.
Director, Consumer Choice and Dietary Health, Food Standards Agency UK
And that's agreed to on an EU-wide basis. That's an EU-wide activity. What we're talking about here is a voluntary approach within the U.K.
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
10:30 a.m.
Bloc
Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you as well, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us today.
Earlier, you spoke of the reaction of people in the industry to this new approach to product labelling. I'm curious as to whether consumer groups criticized, spoke out or provided their input on this new measure. If so, what was their reaction?
10:30 a.m.
Chair, UK Headquarters, Food Standards Agency UK
First of all, I would say that consumer groups—and I would extend this to health charities and community groups—have been extremely positive about and supportive of traffic light labelling. They like it and say it's very clear and very simple.
There was initially some discussion about whether we should have one traffic light, so you would have just have one red or one amber or one green denoting the general healthiness of the product, but we quickly came to realize that was too simple and that dividing it up into the key nutrients was a better way of doing it.
So the customer side, if you can put it like that, has been tremendously supportive of what we're doing, and it is also true to say that a great deal of industry have been very supportive as well. With the major exception of Tesco, the other major supermarkets have all adopted traffic light labelling and are rolling it out across very large numbers of products.
Do you have anything to add?
10:30 a.m.
Director, Consumer Choice and Dietary Health, Food Standards Agency UK
It's just to say that the criteria by which the traffic light colours are defined have been published and are available, should any of the committee members want to the see the actual amounts that trigger whether something is high, medium, or low.
10:30 a.m.
Bloc
Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC
Certainly. Thank you.
I'd like to come back to something that was said. Could the reason also be that it would be harder to achieve a consensus on the colour of the light if there was only one traffic light colour for all of the criteria?
10:30 a.m.
Head, Nutrition Division, Food Standards Agency UK
We've developed criteria for each of those four key nutrients: fats, saturated fat, salt, and sugar. Actually that's probably an easier exercise than trying to combine the information on those different nutrients into a single set of criteria.
Again, working alongside stakeholders, taking scientific advice and consulting with all our stakeholders, we developed criteria for low, medium, and high for each of those four key nutrients. For the low criteria, it was a very simple task, as we simply had to follow EU legislation, because there is now EU legislation determining what the criteria are for low fat, saturated fat, salt, and sugar.
10:35 a.m.
Bloc
Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC
Further to the public awareness campaign that you carried out earlier this year, have you noted any increased awareness of the new labelling standards?
10:35 a.m.
Director, Consumer Choice and Dietary Health, Food Standards Agency UK
The actual campaign started a few weeks ago. We are in the process of tracking the results of it and will have information toward the end of March on how that awareness is going. It's a phased approach, starting with television advertisements, and we now have advertising on bus shelters and on buses and there's information on the website. Also, several of the retailers who have adopted the colour-coded approach are also putting in their own information in-store to raise awareness among consumers.
So it's a little bit early to say at the moment what the impact of the campaign has been, but we will be evaluating it and we'll have that information fairly shortly.
10:35 a.m.
Director, Consumer Choice and Dietary Health, Food Standards Agency UK
We're expecting to have the results of the first wave of awareness by the end of March.
10:35 a.m.
Chair, UK Headquarters, Food Standards Agency UK
But the major research I referred to, looking at what form of labelling most influences changes in consumer behaviour, will actually take about 18 months, so we should get the results of that about the middle to the end of 2008.
10:35 a.m.
Bloc
Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC
How much money did you spend on promoting the new labelling?
10:35 a.m.
Head, Nutrition Division, Food Standards Agency UK
Could we provide that information separately?
I would think it is in the order of £1.5 million. We would prefer to confirm that figure afterwards to make sure we're absolutely accurate, but it is of that order.
10:35 a.m.
Chair, UK Headquarters, Food Standards Agency UK
It's part of the Food Standards Agency budget, so we pay for it.
10:35 a.m.
Conservative
