Front of Package Labelling (FOPL) System

In News

• The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has announced that it will soon start a star rating for packaged food.
  • Public health experts gathered at the ‘National Conclave on Sustainable Food Systems’ organised by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in Rajasthan. 

About star ratings

• The rating will be the first such in India, a country burdened with lifestyle diseases.
• Aim: It is aimed at guiding consumers to opt for healthy food.
• Meaning: Health star rating is a labelling system that grades packaged foods on the scale of one to five stars.
  • The star rating will be determined by the amount of fats, sugar, and salt in the food item.
• Front-of-pack labelling on packaged foods was first recommended by the FSSAI-led committee formed in 2013. 

Importance of the labelling system

• Obesity and non-communicable diseases: If the government is serious about the epidemic of obesity and non-communicable diseases, the consumer needs to be cautioned about junk foods through ‘warning’ labels.
• Study conducted by IIM Ahmedabad: The display of star ratings was recommended by a study conducted by IIM Ahmedabad to make it easier for customers to understand.
• Educate consumers: FSSAI began looking for ways to educate consumers about the nutrition profile of the food they are consuming.
• The system will be similar to the one that is being used by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency for assessing the energy efficiency in electrical devices.

Challenges

• Misleading: Health star ratings are designed by the powerful food industry to mislead the consumer.
• Glorifying junk foods: The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) will give licence to glorify junk foods, which is the opposite of what should be done.
• Least effective method: FSSAI is getting ready to adopt a labelling system which is considered least effective and rejected across the world.
• Health star ratings are depicted based on an algorithm at the back-end: which is not known to consumers and it is only adopted voluntarily in few countries such as Australia and New Zealand and only some food products carry it.
• It has been rejected in several other countries as it can mislead the consumer and be easily manipulated by the industry.
• Faulty calculation: It will mislead the consumer because of its design, algorithm and inclusion of positive nutrients in the calculation.

Way forward/ Suggestions

• The government should issue a ‘warning’ label on packaged junk foods instead of health star ratings as they are misleading and doing more harm to customers than good.
• Following WHO limits: FSSAI came up with a draft regulation in 2018, which had strict threshold limits to know unhealthy levels based on those developed by the WHO for countries like India in the South-East Asia Region.
• The proven best practice in front-of-pack labelling is nutrient specific ‘warning’ labels.
  • They have been simple and effective in discouraging junk food consumption.
  • Several Latin American countries, Canada and Israel have already adopted warning labels.
  • Many other countries are considering them.
  • Among them, the best known are symbol-based warning labels such as that of Israel.

Source: ET