Food information all over the place - upcoming changes expected

K.E. Verzijden, Food information all over the place – upcoming changes expected, LSenR.nl, LS&R 626.
Een bijdrage van Karin Verzijden, Axon advocaten.
Google must have realized this too, as it has added nutritional information into its search functionality, with info on more than 1,000 food items ranking from fruits to vegetable and from meats to complete meals. The new functionality is a part of Google’s Knowledge Graph that was launched in May 2012. Knowledge Graph is a database interconnecting various search results in order to enhance understanding. By offering information in this way, Google aims developing its information engine into a knowledge engine. As to food information, Google wants to help its users to make healthier choices – so it says.

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The Food Information Regulation brings about such important modifications for food information, that it is very likely that the packaging of most of the products marketed in Europe need to be adjusted. The nutrition declarations that Google intends to publish for various foods are just one element of those modifications. It is thereby ironic that in an attempt to harmonize the rules on food information, the Food Information Regulation in the same time creates barriers to EU-wide trade, by means of the language requirements for food information. Furthermore, even if the Regulation regulates food information in great details (e.g. font prescribed font size), it is questionable whether those rules, or more precisely, the exceptions made thereto, will work for B2B transactions or in cases where the food is not sold to final consumers (e.g. mass caterers). This is certainly food for further thought.

Karin Verzijden