The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) published October 9th 2023 a report entitled “Food Label Ambush: How intense industry lobbying halted EU plans”.
This report is based on an access-to-documents request by Foodwatch EU for meetings in 2022 by DG AGRI and DG SANTE with stakeholders (especially the Italian Permanent Representation to EC and Federalimentare, the Italian Federation of Food Industry).
Through countless meetings, misinformation and even threats of increased immigration (!), this document shows how the intense lobbying carried out last year at European level managed to stop the plans of the Commission on food labelling and in particular to prevent the choice of the Nutri-Score – based on rigorous scientific evidence – as a unique and mandatory front-of-pack nutritional label for Europe.
The minutes of the different meetings show a lot of Italian lobbying and surrealistic disinformation : the Permanent Representation of Italy to the EU associated with Federalimentare assert that “the Nutri-Score has no scientific evidence”, “Nutrinform has a strong scientific foundation”, even more absurdly, they went so far as to suggest that « the consumption of cacao products originating from third countries would decrease because of the Nutri-Score, which would in turn increase immigration in Europe »… They also use many other fake news. This report shows how this relentless lobbying using incredible false arguments had a real effect. It highlights who precisely has been lobbying policymakers behind-the-scenes or just what they’ve been saying. It is interesting to note how much the Italian interests concentrated on DG AGRI…
So with this BEUC publication we have a better idea of what happened behind closed doors explaining the current situation at european level…
The “NutriScorePapers” is available on the BEUC blog : https://beuc.eu/blog/food-label-ambush-how-intense-industry-lobbying-halted-eu-plans/
(text with with links with original documents, copies of emails, letters, minutes of meetings…).
NUTRI-SCORE 