Voluntary versus mandatory food labels, Australia

Area of Science:

• Food labelling policy
• Consumer behaviour
• Public health nutrition

Background:

• Front-of-pack nutrition labelling systems aim to inform consumers.
• The voluntary Health Star Rating (HSR) and mandatory country-of-origin labelling (CoOL) are key systems in Australia.
• Assessing uptake rates is crucial for evaluating labelling effectiveness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the adoption rates of the voluntary Health Star Rating (HSR) with the largely mandatory country-of-origin labelling (CoOL) in Australia.
• To analyze trends in food product labelling between 2015 and 2023.

Main Methods:

• Annual surveys of four major Australian food retailers from 2015 to 2023.
• Calculation of the proportion of eligible products displaying HSR and CoOL.
• Analysis of product labelling prevalence in 2023.

Main Results:

• Health Star Rating uptake grew steadily, peaking at 42% in 2021 before declining slightly to 39% in 2023.
• Mandatory country-of-origin labelling rapidly achieved 93% uptake by 2023.
• In voluntary categories, CoOL uptake reached 48% by 2023; 50% of products had CoOL only, 35% had both, 5% had HSR only, and 11% had neither.

Conclusions:

• Mandatory food labelling, like CoOL, drives widespread and rapid change.
• The Australian government should mandate the Health Star Rating for greater consumer benefit.
• This experience supports global best practices for mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling.