06 December 2021

The National Food Authority (NFA) and Food Safety Project today hosted a seminar on food labelling as part of the “Learn to Read your Food” awareness campaign. The hybrid event was attended by food business operators and NFA inspectors and was focused on providing an overview of mandatory labelling requirements for prepacked food.

Albanian Government Decision No. 434 ‘On Food Labelling and Consumer Information’ is approximated to European Union Law on provision of food information to consumers (EU Regulation 1169/2011). The law places responsibility on food business operators to ensure that food information is accurate, clear, easy to understand and is not misleading. Elaine Madden from the Food Safety Project presented an overview of the EU rules and Romeo Boçi from NFA presented examples to highlight common labelling issues in Albania.

NFA has worked closely with the Food Safety Project on adapting a booklet that gives key information on labelling requirements to help food business operators comply with their legal obligations. The booklet will be distributed to food businesses by NFA and can also be downloaded from: https://aku.gov.al/botime-ndergjegjesuese/

Funded by the European Union, the project "Support for Food Safety, Veterinary and Phytosanitary Standards" is being implemented by a group led by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI). The implementing group also includes the Finnish Food Authority, the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and Creative Business Solutions (CBS) in Albania.