Consumers benefit from food labelling

The EU Health Committee has rejected obligatory colour marking for food products in all EU member states. The "traffic light" classification of food products into good (green), tolerable (yellow) and particularly sweet or fatty (red) will remain voluntary. Europe's consumers nevertheless profit from the system, writes the left-liberal daily Frankfurter Rundschau: "On the one hand the rules agreed on by the expert committee will provide more transparency in the shelves and food counters - even without the 'traffic light'. ... Customers can find out where a product comes from, what nutritive value it has and whether it has been genetically modified. On the other hand there is even a small back door for the 'traffic light'. States that want to give it the green light may do so. In this way national consumer associations still have the chance to persuade their governments of the benefits of colour labelling. The food industry, by contrast, is now facing the situation it wanted to avoid at all costs, with different rules in various EU states."

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