EU: Liquor Industry Lets Down Consumers (Again)

Europe’s liquor industry declared plans to list the number of calories and ingredients in their products. But the latest move is not nearly enough and has received heavy criticism from public health experts.
Alcoholic beverages have been exempt from EU labeling rules that are in force for all food and non-alcoholic drinks. Instead of regulating the alcohol industry and requiring effective labelling, the European Commission decided to rely on self-regulation allowing the alcohol industry to come up with their own plan to regulate itself.
The European consumers organization BEUC has said that, with Europe facing an obesity crisis, calorie content labeling for alcohol was a necessity.
In March 2018, the sector came up with an initiative to provide more information about energy content and ingredients but critics said at the time that if much of the information was available only online, it was not realistic to expect all consumers to have access to it…