Ignacio Carreño and Tobias Dolle publish in Issue 1/2016 of the Revue européenne de droit de la consommation
In Issue 1/2016 of the Revue européenne de droit de la consommation, published in March 2017, Ignacio Carreño and Tobias Dolle published an article on “L'étiquetage “clean” et les allégations “sans huile de palme” “évidentes” et “trompeuses”” (pages 99-107).
The article addresses the legal concept of “self-evident” and “flagrantly misleading” advertising established in Article 7(1)(c) of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers (the Food Information Regulation, FIR). Since 13 December 2014 (since the specific origin of vegetable oils must be declared), “palm oil-free” claims on, e.g., a product containing sunflower oil or any other vegetable oil (and mandatorily indicating it in the list of ingredients) are arguably obvious, unnecessary and irrelevant (and in legal terms “self-evident” and “flagrantly misleading”). Compared to similar foods that possess the same characteristics, but do not claim to be “palm oil-free”, these products are in no way “special”.