Nutrition labelling disjointedness making exporting to ASEAN nations more difficult

Food Industry Asia has commissioned a study to investigate the economic impacts of nutritional labelling on ASEAN countries.

The ASEAN Food and Beverage Alliance has already identified nutrition labelling as the most significant barrier faced by the industry for food trade in ASEAN based on four core areas:

• Variances in mandatory and voluntary labelling requirements.
• Variances in nutrition reference values (NRVs) used for packaging claims and nutrition information panel (NIP) formats.
• Different minimum and maximum limits for vitamins and minerals.
• Variances in tolerance levels.

These variances in nutrition labelling (requirements and format) within the region pose difficulties to exporters and result in increased compliance costs to firms as they have to pay multiple product adoption costs that are related to many national standards.

Currently, different ASEAN countries base their labelling regulations on different international guidelines. Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia have followed the Codex guidelines in preparing their regulations, while Thailand and the Philippines have, to some extent, adapted the United States nutrition labelling guidelines.

Even within the countries that adopted the Codex, there are differences — Malaysia makes nutrition labelling mandatory for energy, protein, carbohydrate, fat and total sugars for foods that are commonly consumed (bread and milk, canned meat, fish, vegetable, fruit and fruit juices, salad dressing and mayonnaise) and for various types of beverages. In other ASEAN countries that follow the Codex guidelines, nutrition food labelling is voluntary, unless nutrition or health claims are made on food packaging or if the food is for a special purpose such as diabetic and fortified foods.

This regulatory heterogeneity has been identified as a challenge for increasing trade, harmonising standards and ultimately creating a single integrated Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) market, which was a major objective in the formation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015.

One of the key approaches of the Food Industry Asia (FIA, Singapore) commissioned study is the quantitative macro assessment of the impact of labelling requirements in AMS on regional exporters. This is complemented with a micro firm-level survey on the costs incurred by exporters that can be established and benchmarked to the average firm. The assessment will emphasise the importance for the government to go ahead with the harmonisation process of nutritional labelling at the regional level. This study will also forward specific interventions for regulatory convergence based on segments of the prepackaged food industry and appropriate benchmarking of nutritional labelling.

Associate Prof. Dr. Evelyn Shyamala from the Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya, is the contact for the study.