The NZ Alcohol Beverages Council is challenging a media release from Alcohol Healthwatch (AHW) that alleges 34% of alcohol products in New Zealand have no pregnancy warning label.
The NZ Alcohol Beverages Council says it is so concerned with this statement that they asked AHW directly for information on which retail outlets and products were not complying with the Food Standards Australia New Zealand requirements (FSANZ) .
According to NZABC, AHW said “there was wide-spread non-compliance regardless of the type or location of the premises and it was unhelpful to identify individual retailers as this existed on a widespread scale”.
“Due to the seriousness of AHWs claims, we conducted our own audit in one retail store and checked 1756 products. We found that 99.3% of products had correct pregnancy warning labelling,” said NZABC Executive Director Virginia Nicholls.
According to NZABC:
- There were 20 products that did not have a pregnancy label. As these products were manufactured before 1 August 2023 they complied with FSANZ.
- Twelve products (0.7%) were not labelled correctly. One NZ product was incorrectly labelled and NZABC believes it originated from a cancelled export order. The other products either missed the over-sticker process or the labels may have detached while in-store.
- This retail group has now contacted the suppliers of the 12 products to ensure they relabel existing products instore and in their own stock holdings.
NZABC says crucial information was missing from the AHW factsheet including the locations or products that were audited and the issues with the products that did not meet the FSANZ requirements.
However, AHW did state that “although 33.5% of the products did not have the correct pregnancy warning label, it is difficult to determine whether these are non-compliant they need to be manufactured after 1 August 2023, but the date of manufacture can be difficult for a layperson to determine.”
Nicholls says NZABC recognises the limitation of space on the beer, wine and spirits labels/boxes but emphasises the importance of meeting FSANZ’s requirements in spite of this constraint.
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