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Assessing the impact of revisions to the EU horizontal food labelling legislation
The European horizontal food labelling regulation is designed to provide consumers with the necessary information to make informed food choices and to create a competitive single market in the European Union. In recent years, the horizontal food labelling legislation has, however, been increasingly criticised for becoming more and more complex and unclear, making it both difficult for consumers to find and use information and making it complicated and expensive for business to comply with the regulations. Against this background, the European Commission is currently preparing a revision of the European horizontal food labelling legislation and commissioned RAND Europe to conduct an assessment of the economic, social and environmental impacts of different policy options. This report analyses each option, paying particular attention to how these alternatives would affect the strategic goals of the Commission and key stakeholders in this process. The report concludes with a qualitative comparison of the impact of each policy option against the current situation.
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Contents
Chapter One:
Introduction
Chapter Two:
General labelling for foodstuffs: current situation and the need for change
Chapter Three:
Stakeholders of horizontal labelling policy
Chapter Four:
Determinants of the firm’s labelling costs
Chapter Five:
Structure of legislation
Chapter Six:
Scope of the legislation
Chapter Seven:
Mandatory requirements
Chapter Eight:
Legibility of the information
Chapter Nine:
Origin labelling
Chapter Ten:
Labelling of alcoholic beverages
Chapter Eleven:
Comparing the policy options
Chapter Twelve:
Monitoring and evaluation
Chapter Thirteen:
Conclusion
Appendix A:
List of interviewees
Appendix B:
Survey results
The research described in this report was prepared for the European Commission and conducted by RAND Europe.
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