Peru focuses on education of food labelling

By Espinosa Bellido Abogados

During the XIV Congress of Nutrition and Food, organized by the Peruvian Society of Nutrition (Sopenut), Peru’s National IP Office's authorities highlighted the need on promoting educational tools that allow consumers to understand food labels.

Ivo Gagliuffi, President of the National Institute for the Defense of Competition and the Protection of Intellectual Property (Indecopi), explained that consumers need to understand the fundamental goals of the Law on the Promotion of a Healthy Diet (2017), as only 55% of Peruvians read food labels frequently and 61.7% understand their content.

Peru has a thorough, well-developed food safety and regulatory system with regulations generally science-based by the Ministry of Health’s Directorate General for Environmental Health (Digesa). The system looks to guarantee food safety, improve administrative procedures and strengthen sanitary surveillance.

The recent Law on the Promotion of a Healthy Diet establishes specifications for the inclusion of warnings on the front of package labels of food products that exceed the limits for salt, sugar, saturated fat, and trans-fats.