Australia: Alcohol Warning Labels Overcome Industry Opposition
Australia and New Zealand will be implementing alcohol warning labels after finally overcoming alcohol industry opposition.
Late last year, the Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) released a draft new label for alcohol bottles warning pregnant women to not consume alcohol.
Since the release of the label, Big Alcohol has been lobbying aggressively against it. Alcohol manufacturers made almost 100 submissions to FSANZ arguing against its proposed warning label design. First they claimed the label contained “too much information” then they switched strategies to say the label was “too costly” for the industry.
Despite the aggressive lobbying FSANZ has approved the label with a change to the initial message. The initially proposed message “any amount of alcohol can harm your baby” was changed to “alcohol can cause lifelong harm to your baby.”
Requirements for the label include:
- Use of the colour red instead of the specific Pantone 485 red colour for the circle and strike-through of the pictogram and signal words;
- Revising the warning statement to ‘Alcohol can cause lifelong harm to your baby’ from ‘Any amount of alcohol can harm your baby’;
- A minimum label size is specified for different beverage volumes and types of packages; for packaged alcoholic beverages of 200ml or less the pictogram only is required.
This hugely significant step will help protect future generations of Australians,” said Trish Hepworth, director of policy and research at the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), as per The Sydney Morning Herald.
A final decision on the labelling will be made by the Australia and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation, representing the Commonwealth, state and territory and New Zealand governments.
Ministers have 60 days to request a review of the decision to amend the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code. If it is not reviewed, the amendment will become law, and there will be a two-year transition towards the labelling.
Industry’s voluntary label is ineffective
The alcohol industry is still pushing to have their voluntary ‘DrinkWise’ label instead of the FSANZ approved label. However, the ‘DrinkWise’ label does not include a written warning and directs consumers to a website funded by the alcohol industry. The website contains misleading information which underestimates and spreads doubt about alcohol risk during pregnancy and alcohol harm in general.
FSANZ has ruled that the ‘DrinkWise’ label is ineffective as consumers do not notice it due to its placement and content.
Consumers do not look for warning labels, therefore they must be presented in a way that is likely to attract attention in order to achieve their purpose,” stated the FSANZ, as per The Sydney Morning Herald.
The latest official data from the National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2016 showed:
- 25% of women consumed alcohol after becoming aware they were pregnant,
- 49% used alcohol before finding out they were pregnant.
Therefore, the FSANZ label which is supported by current scientific evidence on alcohol harm during pregnancy is much needed to make sure expecting parents understand alcohol harm to their unborn child.
Despite the clear evidence, industry lobby groups such as IBA and Alcohol Beverages Australia, have already started their lobbying towards the Ministers and are pushing for a review of the FSANZ label, which will make adopting the label a longer and harder process.
The longer it takes to adopt the label the higher the chances are of preventable fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASDs) growing in the country.
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Sources:
The Sydney Morning Herald: “‘Alcohol can cause lifelong harm to your baby’: Regulator approves new warning label”
Brews News: ““Disproportionate” warning labels to cost $100 million”