For a variety of reasons, India’s front of package labelling (FoPL) regulation for ultra-processed packaged foods has long remained undecided and pending.
FoPL is an effective policy for unhealthy retail packaged food environments and will help consumers make informed healthier food choices.
While several nations have implemented stronger regulations through the introduction of FoPL in food products and subsequently witnessed lower rates of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), no such restrictions are still in place in India.
Indeed, non-communicable diseases now account for more than 65 percent of all deaths in the country. a part of its advocacy efforts, CUTS (Consumer Unity & Trust Society) recently made an attempt to map and analyse the present position of the food industry regarding the FoPL in the light of the “India Spotlight Index 2020” for fifteen leading companies with major market share.
The mapping, mainly based on secondary research, revealed that a few of the MNCs headquartered in India have both current practise and the intention to adopt compliance in full, but several other MNCs, small and medium-sized food manufacturers, need to be pushed or forced to do the same.
During the mapping by CUTS, it was perceived that no nutritional information about their food products was found on the company’s websites in six (five headquartered in India) companies, and one had information for less than 10 percent of their products, while two others, one headquartered in India and another outside, had information for 10-49 percent of products.
Another leading brand headquartered in India had 50-90 percent of products with online nutrition information on their websites, and three companies, one headquartered in India and two outside India, had more than 90 percent of product nutrition information available online on their websites.
Five industry players publicly disclose their claims, commitment, and approach, of which three are headquartered in India. These three companies, including three others headquartered outside India, displayed a commitment to provide back-of-pack nutrition information on some and all nutrients not covered by Indian regulation (in force in 2019) on saturated fat (separate to total fat), trans fat, dietary fibre, and sodium (salt).
The India Spotlight Index also scored the labelling of 15 companies on dimensions of commitment, performance, and disclosure. Nine out of fifteen companies scored above six in commitment, while seven scored above eight in commitment. All companies were assigned a score of zero on performance, and five had a respectable score of over six in disclosure.
The mapping identifies several facilitating factors and barriers related to these stakeholders are also synthesized in detail. Some of the facilitating factors concerning these stakeholders are the availability of best international practices, a small set of well-informed consumers, peer pressure, laudable research institutions and public health research and advocacy institutions to generate, collate and feed evidence to FoPL policy and prior experience of the companies to implement FoPL as they are doing it for other international markets where FoPL is mandatory.
Industry reluctance due to vested interests; economic benefits of the food processing industry that are adversely impacted if FoPL is mandated in the desired form as in other countries; suboptimal research in the realm of behaviour change communication and consumer preferences to enable design enforcing and monitoring by regulatory authorities; less educated and less informed consumers towards FoPL, etc. are identified as barriers to implementing FoPL.
While sharing the findings of the industry mapping, George Cheriyan, Director, CUTS International, expressed apprehension about opting for the Health Star Rating (HSR) Label in India. Recent international studies show that the HSR system of Australia and New Zealand is highly flawed as unhealthy food products can still get a high score as the rating is based on their overall.
He further opined that there are still quite a few unaddressed issues in the FoPL regulation, like considering positive nutrients in the FoPL, thresholds for different categories of foods like solids and liquids, beverages, and dairy, design of the FoPL, and mandatory implementation of the FoPL regulation, etc.
He urged the industry to not fear reformulation of their products since global evidence suggests that healthy choices provided by industry are widely accepted by ordinary consumers due to increased awareness about their health. He called on the industry to support an effective and consumer-friendly FoPL in India for the sake of the health of ordinary consumers.