Anvisa receives suggestions on food labels until Monday
The Agency's proposal provides for larger letters and warning about high content of ingredients in a magnifying glass. Entities defend model with triangles
Image: File/eCycle
Until next Monday (9), the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) receives suggestions on proposals to revise the current Brazilian standards for nutritional labeling of foods. The two public consultations began on September 23 and ended on November 7, but were extended. Comments and suggestions can be sent through a specific form on the Anvisa portal.
The public consultations bring together proposals for changes in the current labeling rules for food products to help consumers choose what to take home and guide producers on new standards.
“One of the main objectives of the review of current Brazilian standards for labeling is to make it easier for consumers to understand nutritional information . For this, it is part of the proposal to make the nutritional data on the labels more visible and legible, which will allow comparisons to be made between products and reduce situations that generate deception. The idea is also to expand the scope of nutritional information and improve the accuracy of the values declared by the industry”, informs Anvisa.
After the end of the public consultation, the agency will analyze the contributions and will debate the proposals with bodies, entities and all those who have expressed an interest in the topic, with the aim of providing further support for technical discussions and the final deliberation of the Collegiate Board.
Proposals
Among other items, Anvisa proposes that manufacturers make the nutritional data of their producers more readable, adopting a front label model for foods with a high content of added sugar, saturated fat or sodium - ingredients associated with some of the main non-chronic diseases. communicable diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension.
Anvisa will establish the limits beyond which the presence of these ingredients will configure “high content”. According to the initial proposal, the change will be made in two stages, with a period of 42 months until the complete implementation of the measure.
To facilitate the viewing of information, Anvisa's proposal provides for the manufacturer to use larger fonts (letters) when their product contains a high content of these ingredients. A magnifying glass drawing attention to such information must appear on the front of the product, in the upper half.
Another novelty incorporated into the nutritional table is the standardized statement of nutritional information per 100 grams (g) or 100 milliliters (ml), in addition to the current statement by servings. The proposal also provides for the inclusion of the number of servings per product packaging. The idea is to make it easier for the consumer to compare the contents, without the need to keep doing calculations. Today, these measures allow for great variation, which makes it difficult to understand the information.
Open query
In addition to the model proposed by Anvisa, there are other proposals for food labeling. One of them is the warning triangles model, defended by the Brazilian Institute for Consumer Protection (Idec) and entities in the sector, which would be more informative and didactic for consumers, especially children and young people.
Public consultation is a mechanism for social participation open to any interested party. It allows the population to participate in the discussion about future normative acts or topics of social interest before taking administrative decisions. Relevant manifestations received in writing are usually taken into account during the debate on issues that affect the daily lives of citizens.
Currently, there are 44 open public consultation processes at Anvisa on various topics. But the forms are not very clear or intuitive. With this in mind and seeking to facilitate the participation of those interested in the public consultation on food labeling, Idec developed the website Direitodesaber.org, which offers more information about the proposals under discussion among specialists in the area.
The video below, developed by Idec, explains how to participate in the public consultation on food labeling:
