Nestlé Australia and New Zealand announced that it will be implementing the voluntary Health Star Rating scheme that was approved by the Federal Government last month.
We will begin rolling out the front-of-pack Health Star Rating scheme on products in Australia and New Zealand by the end of the year.
Under the Government’s scheme certain foods will be exempt from displaying the Health Star Rating symbol on packs such as infant nutrition products, foods for special medical purposes and single ingredient foods such as coffee.
As part of our commitment to supporting the public health agendas of the Australian and New Zealand governments and providing consumers with transparent nutrition information, we will also introduce an easy to understand on pack Portion Guidance Device in both countries.
We will continue to support and use the % Daily Intake information on our back of pack nutrition information panels in both Australia and New Zealand.
Globally, we have made a commitment to have front-of-pack GDA labelling on all our products by 2016, because we believe they provide consumers with factual and objective guidance on portion size, along with intake of energy and key nutrients such as saturated fat, sugars, salt and sodium.
We will learn from our experience with the Health Star Rating scheme, in addition to other nutrition labelling systems based on criteria that include portion sizes and food categories, as part of our ongoing effort to provide consumers with the best possible nutrition labelling information.