A Human-Rights-Based Approach to Front-Of-Package Labelling in South Africa

Abstract

South Africa is facing a rapidly increasing rate of diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs), threatening the health, and consequently the protection, promotion and fulfilment of the human rights of South Africans. As part of its response to the growing epidemic, the government has proposed the adoption of a simplified nutrition-labelling system that includes a front-of-package warning label. The use of front-of-package labelling (FOPL) has been shown to improve diets by providing consumers with easy-to-understand information about food products that are generally difficult to interpret as a layperson, and to serve as a basis to adopt other effective obesity-prevention measures, such as marketing restrictions or taxes on unhealthy foods. FOPLs have been successfully implemented in other countries and endorsed as a mechanism to realise the rights to health, food and access to information by international human-rights commentators. A FOPL regime will also complement consumer-protection legislation in South Africa, being aimed at promoting access to information for South Africans. This article makes a human-rights-based case for FOPL by outlining why implementing FOPL would be a unique and effective mechanism for the South African government to meet its human-rights obligations under the Constitution and international human-rights instruments. Specifically, this article identifies rights that can be used to support the adoption of FOPL, and concretises the obligations and content within these rights to provide a human-rights-based justification for the adoption of simplified nutrition labelling in South Africa.