Fully 60 per cent of packaged foods on shop shelves fail to comply with the labelling law, the Audit Commission said yesterday in a report criticising a far rosier estimate from the Centre for Food Safety.
Earlier this year the centre reported that almost 100 per cent of the foods it surveyed met the law's requirements for listing nutrients.
The Audit Commission criticised the centre for taking most of its test samples from large chain supermarkets rather than small food outlets. As a result, the centre's finding of almost 100 per cent compliance with the law might be hugely inflated, it said.
Hong Kong adopted compulsory nutrition labelling for packaged foods in July last year, requiring the listing of protein, carbohydrates, total fat, saturated fat, trans-fat, sodium, sugars and energy.
In its report on the first year under the new law, the centre found the overall compliance rate was 99.3 per cent. Of 16,245 food labels, only 111 were found without a nutrition listing or made inappropriate nutrition claims.
But the Audit Commission engaged a local university to provide accredited laboratory services for its test of packages, and it found 42 of the 70 samples tested were suspected of being non-compliant.
'The Audit [Commission] found that the Centre for Food Safety's compliance tests ... were subject to limitations,' the report read. The centre selected most of its food samples from large chain supermarkets, where the risk of non-compliance was generally low, it said.
