More than 12 000 submissions have been collected and submitted by health activists at the Community Media Trust and the Healthy Living Alliance (HEALA) in response to the Health Department’s draft Regulations Relating to the Labelling and Advertising of Foodstuffs.
Consumers had until 21 July to comment on the draft document, which was gazetted in January, writes Mary-Anne Gontsana in GroundUp, which among other things, proposes mandatory and bolder front of pack warning labels on unhealthy food, which includes items high in salt, sugar, saturated fats and items containing artificial sweeteners.
Community Media Trust (CMT), a not-for-profit company, mainly focused on health and human rights, has partnered with the Healthy Living Alliance (HEALA), a coalition of organisations focused on nutrition.
In February, CMT and HEALA launched a “Less Sugar, More Life” campaign in Cape Town before the Finance Minister’s Budget Speech, advocating for an increase in the sugary drinks tax – and were disappointed that the tax would be frozen for two years.
However, after a massive media campaign, they have since collected thousands of submissions.
CMT’s co-director Lucilla Blankenberg said the warning labels, which are black and white triangles, would clearly indicate when products were high in sugar, salt or fat, or contained artificial sweeteners.
“The food industry is fighting back is because if products have warning labels, they cannot be marketed directly to children. And they can’t make any health claims whatsoever,” she said.
HEALA’s communications manager Zukiswa Zimela said conversations proposing front of pack warning labels started in 2016, and that research for the campaign was initially done by the University of Western Cape to determine which foods qualify for front of pack warning labels.
She said many consumers did not understand the nutritional information on packaging, and that the food industry had used scare tactics like saying warning labels would cause job losses, which was “completely untrue”.
“Warning labels have been done in other countries like Chile, Mexico and Peru, and there has been no evidence jobs were lost because of it.”
Sugar industry warns against “demonising sugar”
The South African Sugar Association (Sasa) told GroundUp it had also submitted comments on the regulations, and that the front of pack warning labelling system was particularly concerning.
Sasa executive director Trix Trikam said: “The aim of this system is to encourage the reduction of energy/calorie intake, saturated fat and salt to prevent obesity and non-communicable diseases.
“But it’s well known that sugar is not the sole contributor of kilojoules to the diet and should therefore not be singled out in an out-of-context manner.”
He said the labels should not “seek to demonise sugar”, which would have “a significant adverse impact on the industry”, and should, instead, reflect the calories in a product.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Activists campaign for easy-to-understand, user-friendly food labelling
New, stricter rules for food labelling
Why SA isnʼt ready for health claims on food labels