Another call for Health Star Ratings to become mandatory in Australia

Australia’s food industry is failing to meet the targets for displaying the Health Star Rating (HSR) on product packaging, according to the ‘2023 State of the Food Supply Report’ released today by The George Institute for Global Health.

Implemented in Australia and New Zealand in 2014, the HSR is a voluntary front-of-pack labelling system that rates the overall nutritional profile of packaged food and assigns it a rating from ½ a star to 5 stars — the more stars, the healthier the choice.

The annual analysis shows only 36% of products on supermarket shelves that should carry the HSR currently do, falling well short of the Australian Government’s 50% uptake target for 2023, set as an output of the formal review of the HSR in 2019. The Department of Health is due to release its own update on progress early in 2024, using information it will gather up until mid-November this year, which is likely to reflect the Institute’s findings.

Senior Research Fellow in Food Policy at The George Institute Dr Alexandra Jones said the industry’s poor performance both on displaying the label and in improving the healthiness of foods compels the Institute to call out the failure of a voluntary approach.

“Time’s up for the industry to demonstrate what they can do on a voluntary basis. It’s clear that they are not going to act without being compelled to do so. The HSR program will be 10 years old in 2024; however, its uptake is slower than in at least 15 other countries where front-of-pack nutrition labelling is mandatory,” Jones said.

“We’re now making a direct and urgent call for the government to stipulate mandatory HSR usage on all eligible products, with appropriate penalties for non-compliance, and to start that process now to stop industry actively exploiting the system at the expense of consumers’ health.”

The ‘2023 State of the Food Supply Report: A Five-Year Review’ shows overall uptake of HSR on intended products* has remained static at 36% for the past three years, dropping from 40% since the targets were set in 2019 following a government review.

“We commend the companies that are proactively applying the HSR and making changes to recipes to improve their ratings. For all others, the voluntary approach appears to have provided little incentive to provide information transparently to consumers to improve public health. The rating is a tool to improve the accountability of the food industry for its products — it’s time they stepped up and took responsibility for the healthiness of their products. That means displaying the rating, and improving nutritional quality if they want to get a higher rating,” Jones said.

The food industry has resisted mandatory HSRs to date on the basis that it would be costly and time-consuming to implement.

^{*Foods intended to carry the HSR system are those required by the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code to have a nutrition information panel (NIP) and may also vary in nutritional composition.}

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