Imagine what life would be like for diabetics, for people with severe allergies and ordinary consumers anxious to know the content of what they are eating, if every country in Europe's common market (in which products circulate freely) had either a different system of food labelling or didn't have any requirements at all.
Yet this is an issue which causes controversy and anger amongst some producers and retailers. When the EU introduced the Food Supplements Directive, which set out a "positive list" of permitted ingredients in vitamins and food supplements and was aimed at ensuring that supplements are safe and appropriately labelled, several manufacturing group, albeit unsuccessfully) took the case to the European Court of Justice.
It is surely right that consumers should receive crucial information about food products such as expiry dates, nutritional labelling and recycling details. People have to be able to trust what they put on their plates. There is no doubt that nutritional labelling will help consumers to make informed choices about the food that they eat.
A recent survey by the UK consumers group Which? found that 99% of people wanted health claims on food checked before they go on sale and were surprised that such claims were not fully regulated already. Indeed, we are only talking about basic consumer rights. People have a right to know whether the "low fat" yoghurt that they buy as a healthy option for their children is in fact unhealthy in other respects such as sugar levels.
This is not about seeking to regulate taste. Having effective nutritional labelling is not about telling people what they can and can't eat.. However, it goes without saying that ensuring that all food products have proper nutritional information will make it easier for consumers to make healthier dietary choices that will help ward off the deadly threat of heart disease, stroke and obesity.
Trickier is how to make labelling effective. The Commission's Health and Consumer Protection Department estimates that although most consumers are keen to have food labelling, particularly on processed food products, they often do not check or ignore the nutrition label. A possible solution could be to introduce something similar to the "signpost" scheme used in the UK . In March 2006, the UK 's Food Standards Agency approved a voluntary colour-coded nutritional labelling scheme despite the objections of some manufacturers. The FSA's "signpost" scheme uses green, amber and red to indicate whether foods contain low, medium or high amounts of fat, saturates, sugar and salt.
Besides, it stands to reason that labelling can benefit manufacturers as well since they can use this tool, not only to provide nutritional information to prospective consumers, but also as a means of highlighting the qualities of their food stuffs with their competitors. As we have seen from the huge increase in the number of people buying organic food, people want to know what they are eating and are prepared to pay for quality produce.
Indeed, European standards on food labelling are good news for responsible companies. Without a common EU system, each EU country would devise their own labelling schemes and companies would have to comply with 27 different systems to sell their products across the EU. Therefore, taking action on this at an EU level will both keep the regulatory burden on food companies to a minimum and, at the same time, provide important information to consumers.
It is, of course, important to maintain a balance. Food labelling that is complex and difficult to understand would give few benefits and create heavy costs for companies. However, provided that there is co-operation between the EU, member states, manufacturers and consumers, there is no reason that such a balance cannot be struck.