The Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA) this week launched a range of user guides to help food businesses, retailers and food officers to interpret and apply the new joint Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code. ANZFA's General Manager Standards, Mr Peter Liehne said, "In December last year, Food Standards Ministers agreed to a new Food Standards Code for Australia and New Zealand which will bring considerable benefits to both industry and consumers. "These 12 plain English guides to the new Food Standards Code cover a range of issues including percentage labelling, ingredient labelling, warning and advisory statements, legibility, date marking and several food product standards." In September 2001 ANZFA will release a package to help users with nutrition labelling including a user guide and an Internet-based nutrition panel calculator. The food authority also announced that a user guide on GM food labelling has also been developed by an inter-governmental task force and that it is now available in final form. The user guides are both on the ANZFAwebsite and available in hard copy through ANZFA's publishers Anstat.
