REGULATORY AND CONSUMER LAW | ANVISA APPROVES NEW RESOLUTION ON NUTRITIONAL LABELING
On October 7, 2020, the National Health Surveillance Agency (“ANVISA”) approved the new Resolution on nutritional labeling of packaged foods.
Approved by consensus by ANVISA’s Collegiate Board of Directors, the current standard’s revision has been discussed for years and aims to provide more clarity and legibility to the nutritional information on food labels.
The following are the main new rules of the updated Resolution:
1) Nutritional Information
The Nutritional Information Table must have black letters and a white background, in order to avoid contrasts with the product packaging.
The indication of the amount of total and added sugars, the energy and nutritional value per 100g or 100 ml and the number of portions per package are now mandatory.
As a rule, the table must be close to the list of ingredients and printed on a continuous surface. It cannot be presented in covered areas, deformed places or regions of difficult visualization. An exception was made for products whose labeling area is less than 100 cm², in which the table may be presented in covered areas, as long as they are accessible.
The template above was disclosed by ANVISA and represents one of the available templates for the nutritional table format.
2) Front Labeling
Disclosure of frontal nutrition labeling IS now mandatory on the labels of packaged foods when the quantities of added sugars, saturated fats or sodium are equal or higher than the limits to be defined by a subsequent regulatory instruction. The symbols must appear on the front of the product, at the top.
The template above was disclosed by ANVISA and represents one of the available templates for when a product has a high content of the three mentioned ingredients.
3) Nutrition claims
New rules have been proposed for the use of nutritional claims, in order to avoid contradictions with the nutritional table.
Briefly, the products cannot contain claims that disagree with the information on the front label. For example: foods with frontal labeling of saturated fat cannot have claims regarding total, saturated, trans and cholesterol fats. Furthermore, the claims cannot be at the top of the product for those foods that contain the frontal nutrition labeling.
4) Deadlines
After the publication of the new Resolution in the Official Gazette, the following deadlines must be observed:
a) 24 months: The new Resolution sets forth a period of 24 months until its effective entry into force. In addition, products manufactured before the entry into force of the resolution may be sold until the end of its expiration date.
b) 12 months: After the entry into force of the resolution, the rule established an additional period of 12 months for adapting products manufactured by smaller companies, including family farmers, rural family entrepreneurs, solidarity economic enterprises, individual micro-entrepreneurs, small agribusinesses, handcrafted agribusinesses and handcrafted products.
c) 36 months: For non-alcoholic beverages in returnable packaging, the adaptation of the products cannot exceed 36 (thirty-six) months after the Resolution comes into force.
The standard should be published in the Federal Official Gazette in the coming days.
Trench Rossi and Watanabe Strategic Consumer Law and Public Regulatory Law teams are available to provide further information.
Source: Ministry of Health website (available here) and draft Collegiate Board Resolution published by ANVISA (available here).
