Nutrition and health claims on food: proposed legislative reforms
Read the full outcome
Detail of outcome
As part of the retained EU law (REUL) programme, which aims to harness the opportunities of EU exit by reforming REUL to work better for UK businesses and consumers, the government consulted on proposed reforms to the regulation on nutrition and health claims on food earlier this year.
These reforms will introduce a more proportionate response to enforcement which is less burdensome on both businesses and enforcement authorities, while providing the right incentives to improve compliance and tidy up the UK statute book by removing unnecessary legislation which has already taken effect.
The consultation document was circulated widely and published on GOV.UK to seek views on the proposed changes. This document summarises the key comments made by respondents and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities’ (OHID) response to them.
We would like to thank respondents for sharing their views on the proposals.
Original consultation
Consultation description
The government wants to ensure that consumers can have confidence in the food they buy, and any health benefits promoted on the label.
The nutrition and health claims regulations ensure that claims made about a food or drink are accurate and not misleading so that consumers can make informed choices to meet their lifestyle and nutritional needs.
The government is proposing changes in relation to nutrition-related labelling, composition and standards (NLCS) retained EU law.
The consultation sets out 2 proposals:
- reforming nutrition and health claims enforcement in England by introducing an improvement notices regime
- removing redundant tertiary legislation that approved or rejected health claims
Documents
Updates to this page
Last updated 6 February 2024 + show all updates
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Added government response to the consultation.
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First published.