Ukraine has taken another step in approximation with EU legislation, this time in the area of information for consumers. Ukraine's parliament (Verkhovna Rada) on Thursday 6 December, passed at second reading bill No. 8450 on information about food for consumers, regulating the rules of food labeling and introducing fines for giving untrue information on labels.
"The main purpose of the bill is to ensure that consumers are properly informed about food products. The bill prohibits the use of information that may mislead consumers. The ban also applies to food advertising and presentation," Deputy Chairman of the parliamentary committee on agrarian policy and land relations Oleksandr Bakumenko wrote on his Facebook page.
He said that among the main innovations of the bill are: the establishment of requirements for ensuring the legibility of information, in particular, to the minimum font size, which is provided with mandatory information about the food product; regulation of requirements for providing information on allergens (font, style or color in the list of ingredients); the introduction of uniform requirements for the provision of information about food products, which are sold by remote means; the requirement to provide information on refined oils or fats of vegetable origin used in food products; providing the consumer with information about whether the food product was subjected to freezing/defrosting; the use of a new approach for Ukraine to designate the shelf life of a food product, depending on whether the food product is perishable due to its microbiological properties.
