Document 4
Ref. Ares(2020)309192 - 17/01/2020
EUROPEAN COMMISSION 
HEALTH & CONSUMER PROTECTION DIRECTORATE-GENERAL  
Directorate E – Safety of the Food Chain 
E4 – Food Law, Nutrition and Labelling 
Brussels, 30 March 2007 
Steering Group on Impact Assessment for the forthcoming review 
of the EU general and nutrition food labelling policy  
2nd Meeting 
27 March 2007 
 CHAR 1/47 
SUMMARY RECORD 
Present: 
 
, 
 (SANCO, E4), 
 (SANCO, 02), 
, 
 (AGRI), 
 (ENTR), 
, 
,
, 
 (RAND Europe)
The 
 (Chair) welcomed everyone to the meeting.  Apologises had been 
received from representatives of RTD, SEC GEN and TRADE. 
1.
Survey of food business operators
The Chair thanked the Steering Group for their assistance with the finalisation of the 
questionnaire to food business operators which is intended to provide information on the costs 
associated with food labelling and those that might arise with the different policy options. 
The questionnaire had been made available online at 
http://www.foodlabelsurvey.eu/index.htm  on 22 March and would remain available for 8 
weeks until 16 May 2007.  SANCO had informed the members of the Advisory Group on the 
Food Chain and Animal Health that the survey was taking place and had asked the group to 
inform their members.  To maximise the number of responses the members of the Steering 
Group were asked to inform their contacts that might be affected by changes in the labelling 
legislation that questionnaire was available. 
The contractor explained that the input to the questionnaire would be monitored to see if any 
of the questions appeared to be problematic.  It would be possible for the wording of the 
questions to be revised or questions could be suppressed but it would difficult to include new 
questions. 
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Following a comment from DG ENTR it was agreed that the option to print the questionnaire 
before completing the survey would be investigated.  It was considered that this option would 
enable respondent to collect all the relevant information prior to completing the survey online.   
2. 
Presentation of progress on impact assessment work 
 (RAND Europe) presented the work that had been completed and reported in the 
interim reports that had been circulated prior to the meeting.  The next steps would be 
structured interviews with a limited number of representatives of government, food industry 
and academics.  The data collected through the survey would be aggregated and the process of 
the cost consequence analysis of the different policy options would start taking place during 
April.  The final report would be prepared in May.  
Members of the group provided input on some of the issues that might be relevant such as the 
need to consider means of communication other than the label and the effect of cultural 
differences between different population groups.  DG AGRI suggested that the experience of 
the introduction of mandatory labelling for certain basic produce might be relevant and agreed 
to seek information that would be relevant to the impact assessment. 
3. Next 
steps 
The final report from the contractor will be delivered in May.  SANCO intend to present the 
impact assessment of the different policy option to the Impact Assessment Board in the fist 
half of July.  Therefore the draft impact assessment will be finalised before the end of June.  
The input of the Steering Group would be required in the first half of June. 
 
 
SANCO E.4 
March 2007 
 
 
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