A new proposal to give food products a rating out of five stars will be put to federal and state ministers under a new plan to cut obesity, according to reports.
The proposal, to be put to the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council meeting, will see foods rated on their nutritional value, although the food and grocery industry will write to health ministers expressing concerns over the plan.
The plan will initially be trialled as a voluntary code with the possibility of being made mandatory and comes after the government abandoned its controversial planned ‘traffic lights’ nutritional information system in 2011.
University of Adelaide law professor Andrew Stewart, one of the architects behind the Fair Work Act, has warned the government’s proposed bullying changes threaten to overload the system.
“If you look at the numbers the commission has said it is planning on, now that’s a huge number, as it is,” Stewart says.
“I certainly think it would have been more sensible to build in some form of filtering mechanism to deal with bullying complaints.”
Auto brands Volkswagen, Audi and Skoda have all announced Australian recalls over concerns about gearbox failures, impacting around 26,000 cars.
The recall follows a coronial inquest into the death of a 32-year-old Melbourne woman named Melissa Ryan, who was killed in an accident while driving a 2008 VW Golf on the Monash Freeway.
The recall impacts vehicles made between June 2008 and September 2011 fitted with Volkswagen’s DSG transmission system.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 0.84% to 14,994.77. The Aussie dollar is up to US94.25 cents.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
