The Commission asked industry groups to come up with a common proposal for the best way to label alcohol. Once it gets a good look at the proposition, Brussels will have to say if it does the job. If not, the Commission pledges to working toward an EU regulation.<\/p>\n
Trade associations representing wine, beer, spirits and ciders offered their proposal<\/a> to the Commission on March 12. Their big gambit is that they say it is perfectly good enough for consumers to check a web link given on a bottle label, or take out their smartphones and scan a digital QR barcode<\/a> that will link to calorie numbers and ingredients online.<\/p>\n The proposal itself fails to resolve long-running divisions between the beer and spirits sectors about whether to label calories by serving or by 100 milliliters | William West\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n These suggestions have prompted backlash from 12 public health groups, which called<\/a> the industry\u2019s pitch a failure.Putting information online rather than on labels excludes a large category of consumers who don\u2019t have a smartphone or are not computer literate, said Mariann Skar, the general secretary of the European Alcohol Policy Alliance, an NGO better known as Eurocare. \u201cWe do not have to go online to find information for milk or orange juice, why should we for wine?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The consumers\u2019 group BEUC said<\/a> the idea is a no-go. \u201cAs consumers make shopping decisions in a matter of seconds, it is unrealistic to expect they will take a few minutes to check online how calorific wine or vodka is,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n Being subject to the same rules as other products \u201cmeans nutritional information per 100 ml and a list of ingredients provided on the label,\u201d according to the consumers\u2019 group.<\/p>\n It\u2019s far from certain that the Commission will support an industry proposal that shunts the labeling debate into cyberspace.<\/p>\n And the proposal itself fails to resolve long-running divisions between the beer and spirits sectors about whether to label calories by serving or by 100 milliliters.<\/p>\n The seemingly technical dispute over how to display a reasonable volume of what you are drinking proved to be a brutal lobbying battleground.<\/p>\n The EU\u2019s Food Information to Consumers Regulation of 2011 requires food and soft drink producers to provide information on calories per 100 grams or 100 milliliters and \u201cif appropriate, to allow additional portion-based declarations.\u201d The law was only voluntary for the alcohol industry, and the big question now is whether it will become mandatory.<\/p>\n Beermakers don\u2019t mind the concept of calories-per-100 ml labeling because that is a third of the amount of beer people regularly down in one glass.<\/p>\n But the spirits industry says a 100 ml label gives an unfair impression of calories, since it is based on a volume far in excess of a typical serving of their products. The usual serving for vodka, for example, is a quarter of that.<\/p>\n On a label, a drink of spirits could show up as some 240 calories per 100 ml, while a beer would only have about 40 calories, according to a SpiritsEurope chart<\/a>. But a glass of spirits in a bar would add 67 calories to your energy intake, while a standard 250 ml glass of beer would add slightly more than 100 calories.<\/p>\n While the whole alcohol industry committed in the joint proposal<\/a> to the Commission to label calories per 100 ml and leave each boozemaker the option of also including portion sizes, the tension between brewers and spirits-makers has not subsided.<\/p>\n \u201cOur key objective has been, and always will be, to ensure that the information provided is meaningful and comparable,\u201d SpiritsEurope said, adding that it proposed a collective voluntary commitment by the industry to display the information per serving in addition to 100 ml. \u201cThis was not considered acceptable by The Brewers,\u201d the spirits lobby said.<\/p>\n SpiritsEurope asked the Commission to allow spirits labels to give \u201cmore visibility\u201d to calorie labeling per portion size. It also wants it to oblige \u201call alcoholic beverages not habitually consumed in 100 ml servings [to] provide energy\/nutrition per serving,\u201d SpiritsEurope boss Ulrich Adam said.<\/p>\n But Pierre-Olivier Bergeron, the secretary-general of the Brewers of Europe, responded that EU law mandates the 100 ml approach and it should be respected by the alcohol industry, the same way it\u2019s already applied by the food and soft drinks sectors. \u201cAny attempt by any sector to dismantle or even dilute the fundamentals of [the 2011 regulation] that govern legal, meaningful, fair and satisfactory information to consumers will not be acceptable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n That said, many brewers may decide to put the portion-based calorie numbers on their bottles too, and some already do, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI wonder whether this labeling decision would take place before the next European elections\u201d \u2014 Renate Sommer<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Health groups, meanwhile, have endorsed the legal limit of 100 ml labeling. \u201cEverybody can count,\u201d Eurocare\u2019s Skar said.<\/p>\n Winemakers claim to have yet another, more idiosyncratic concern. Because the quality of the vintage changes each year, that could require continual (and costly) updates to labels. The vintners have objected to the need to put ingredients on the label, as \u201cwine changes from one year to the other and even during the maturation process. Contrary to other industrial products, there is no pre-established recipe,\u201d said Jean-Marie Barill\u00e8re, the president of the wine lobby CEEV, in reaction<\/a> to the Commission\u2019s 2017 report.<\/p>\n Europe came close to some kind of booze labeling in 2008.<\/p>\n The Commission proposed a new regulation on food information to consumers that would cover so-called alcopops, a mix of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, but exempted wine, spirits and beer from the demand. It promised instead to assess the labeling of those drinks in a specific report \u2014 an assessment that eventually came nine years later.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is something we were astonished about in the Parliament: For us it was not clear why just alcopops should be labeled and not all the alcoholic beverages,\u201d said Renate Sommer, a German EPP MEP who was in charge of the law in the European Parliament at the time.<\/p>\n Because there was no clear definition of alcopops and because EU countries \u2014 usually very defensive of their own alcohol industries \u2014 did not want to extend the labeling requirements to other types of booze, the Commission\u2019s regulation proposal passed in 2011 without new rules for alcohol.<\/p>\n The spirits industry says a 100 ml label gives an unfair impression of calories, since it is based on a volume far in excess of a typical serving of their products | Fred Dufour\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n Now the Commission is showing greater signs of commitment to following through with labeling if it doesn\u2019t find the industry\u2019s proposal \u201csatisfactory.\u201d For a Commission official who was not authorized to speak on the record, satisfactory means providing calorie information on physical labels, not online.<\/p>\n For now, the Commission is holding its cards close. It praised the alcohol sectors for their efforts in coming up with a common pitch. \u201cThe Commission is determined to find an equitable solution that offers to the EU citizens enhanced information on the alcohol they drink,\u201d said a Commission spokesperson.<\/p>\n In the meantime, MEP Sommer doubts a legislative proposal from the Commission on mandatory labeling could be agreed quickly. \u201cI wonder whether this labeling decision would take place before the next European elections,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The Commission has 20 months left in its mandate and the impact assessment needed for new laws could take longer than that.<\/p>\n If it doesn\u2019t work very quickly, a new College of Commissioners will pick up the baton, potentially pushing well into the 2020s a decision on a goal first proposed in the 1980s.<\/p>\n This article is part of a special report on alcohol labeling, Message on a Bottle.<\/em><\/p>\n Original Article<\/a><\/p>\n [contf] EU rules made it far easier to find out how many calories are in a slice of cake than in a glass of ..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"yoast_head":"\n![](\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/GettyImages-455683386-714x397.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\nThe 100 ml debate<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Almost-labeled alcopops<\/h3>\n
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