Request for data and information about the “‘Salt/Sugar’ Label Scheme for Prepackaged Food Products” scheme

ZHANG Luting made this Freedom of Information request to Food and Environmental Hygiene Department

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Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Food and Environmental Hygiene Department should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Food and Environmental Hygiene Department,

Concerning about the health problems of people in Hong Kong caused by high intake of salt, my classmate and I are doing a research based on the government programme “‘Salt/Sugar’ Label Scheme for Prepackaged Food Products” (mainly focus on salt) (relevant information that we have already found is from the website https://www.cfs.gov.hk/sc_chi/multimedia...), trying to evaluate the current condition of this programme and help promote it. Therefore, we are writing this letter to request for relevant data and information to further continue our research and give suggestions to help try to solve the problem.

Q1. Referring to the official website for the “‘Salt/Sugar’ Label Scheme for Prepackaged Food Products” programme, the government has promoted the “low salt” and “no salt” labels with three language versions: Chinese, English and Bilingual, available in colour and black-and-white version. For the participating merchants, the government takes the “voluntary participation” principle. The government has also made advertising videos to promote the programme. Therefore, does the government or relevant department responsible for this programme have further measures to keep promoting and advertising this programme on the label of “no salt/low salt”? If any, please provide some details.

Q2. How does the government or relevant department responsible for this programme evaluate the impact and effectiveness of this programme on the label of “no salt/low salt”?

Q3. Does the government or relevant department responsible for this programme collect the feedback from consumers to analyze the effectiveness of this programme’s implementation on the label of “no salt/low salt” and make immediate adjustments? If any, please provide the relevant information.

Yours faithfully,

ZHANG Luting