Food labelling challenge for smaller food manufacturers
A small but growing Western Australian food manufacturer, Sticky Fingers Gourmet Foods, claims that if traffic light labelling were introduced, it could spell the death knell for many small Australian food manufacturers.
Lyn Bentley, Managing Director of Sticky Fingers Gourmet Foods contacted Australian Food News about its recent report of the dispute between CHOICE and the ACCC over front-of-pack label systems. Ms Bentley said, “As a small manufacturer supplying to both the food service and retail food industries, the costs of having to change all of our labels will be prohibitive for us.
“If this new traffic light labelling becomes law, we will no longer manufacture for the retail industry at all. Government rulings make our lives as manufacturers difficult enough without added pressures from CHOICE.”
Sticky Fingers is a group manufacturer that specialises in hand-made relishes, jams, mayonnaises, mustards, savoury sauces, marinades. It produces more than 50 tonnes per year. Its customer base includes cafes, bistros, and food outlets in Western Australia and several Asian countries.
“Being a small manufacturer, we need to get a good buy on our labels which means we need to bulk buy them,” said Ms Bentley. “This costs a lot of money and we invest a lot of money making sure we have everything right with the labels. When labelling requirements change, companies like ours are given a certain amount of time to change our labels. Any stock not changed has to come off the shelf and is lost.
“Small food manufacturers will bear the brunt”
Ms Bentley said, “The food industry is becoming over-governed and the impacts on small businesses are not being recognised. Small food manufacturers are crucial to the food industry because we do not downsize like the larger companies do – we carry the industry.
“As a manufacturer, if traffic light labelling is brought in as law, we will focus on manufacturing for the food services sector instead as the labelling requirements are less demanding for us. However, for small food manufacturers who supply purely to the retail industry, these changes in food product labelling could be the final nail in the coffin.”
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Lyn is quite correct, but it goes beyond that. Every interest group wants their particular ingredient or nutritional aspect to have special hightlights on a food label, with the usual argument that they “have a right to know”. Big food corporations have teams of technicians to deal with this complexity. Small businesses, be they manufacturers or importers do not. So we have to stop supply, and our consumers have to go without.
Our business imports specialty products for a specific ethnic group. They do not care about traffic lights, or potassium content, or whether it has soy, etc. They just want to buy these particular products, but soon they will not be able to buy them anymore. But what about the rights of these consumers?
Choice has a history of siding with big business to the detriment of small business. They obviously think ‘their’ consumers are more important than everyone elses.
I refer to the matter of Traffic Light labelling on front of food labels.
The consumer is adequately informed of food nuitrients with the current regs requiring nuitritional panels. If a consumer does not want to oberserve this information, then putting the same information in Traffic Light format on the label front will not be of any benefit.
The vast number of small Australian manufacturers of specailty food products could never be expected to change their labels for what is a very small specialty food market in Australia, which for some products comprises less than 300,000 consumers, Australia wide.
CHOICE would be much better advised in lobbying for better healthy eating education, for consumers to understand that sugar, salt and some fats in themselves are not bad for us, but in excess can be bad, For example, cheese (very high fat level) is good for you in moderation, but the proposed Traffic Light labelling would give a very negative message.
This Traffic Light labelling proposal is an acceptable and onerous impost on the small artisan food manufacturers in Australia and gives misinformation about a healthy diet.