Today Member States have adopted a proposal by the European Commission to reduce cancer-causing acrylamide in food. With the new rules, food manufacturers, fast-food chains and restaurants will have to apply measures to ensure acrylamide levels in their products remain below benchmarks. Up until now, the EU had relied on industry’s voluntary efforts to reduce acrylamide. However, levels of acrylamide in Europeans’ food have remained roughly the same.

BEUC and its member organisations are calling today on European food companies and retailers1 to stop using cartoons when marketing nutrient-poor foods to young consumers. The consumer groups’ call applies to both advertising and packaging.

The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) undertook a consumer performance check of the first two-and-a-half years of the Juncker Commission.1 We looked at the Commission’s legislative initiatives and its key policy actions and graded their performance on a scale from very good to very bad.

Consumer information about alcoholic beverages deserves a boost. This is what comes out of the European Commission’s report on alcohol labelling which has just been released, over two years past the deadline1. Regrettably, the report does not call for immediate action to make nutrition and ingredient labelling mandatory for all alcoholic drinks.