Changes To Food Legislation - Part I

Summary

On 13 December 2014, the Regulation 1169/2011 on the Provision of Food Information to Consumers became directly applicable in Slovenia, repealing previous pieces of legislation such as the Rules on Pre-packaged Foodstuffs and the Rules on Nutritional Labelling of Foodstuffs. The main novelties food business operators will have to comply with when labelling products include emphasizing of allergens in bold or underlined text, the indication of nano-ingredients, and the use of different font sizes. The newly-introduced meas-ures are aimed at ensuring that consumers achieve higher levels of health protection and at guaranteeing their right to information.

The growing tendency to comprehensively inform and protect consumers purchasing foodstuffs is not only inducing constant amendments and improvements to food legislation, but also propelling the Slovenian (food) inspection authorities to centralize and improve their supervision practices. Following the general principles of food legislation, the labels on foodstuffs should not be unclear, ambiguous or misleading. In Slovenia, the information on labels should also be presented in the local language. One of the main novelties to EU legislation in recent years was the adoption of Regulation 1169/2011 on the Provision of Food Information to Consumers (''Regulation''), directly applicable in Slovenia as of 13 December 2014. Local food business operators, namely producers, distributors and others placing products on the Slovenian market, have thus been prudently adapting to the legislative changes by aligning their products with the new labelling requirements. Despite numerous complaints that food business operators have not been given sufficient time to adapt, Slovenian authorities routinely reiterate that the Regulation introduced changes already in 2011 and that inspectors shall therefore not be overlooking belated adaptations.

At the national level, new Guidelines for the Definition of Products that may simultaneously fall within the Definition of Medicinal Products and Products which are subject to other Regulations for Human Use (''Guidelines'') were adopted in October 2014. The Guidelines are to be used as (non-binding) guidance in case of borderline products.

Application and implementation of the Regulation and related (sub)legislation

Despite the fact that the majority of the Regulation's provisions are directly applicable already from 13 December 2014 onwards, those provisions...