Lawmakers will next week vote on important new legislation to introduce nutrition labelling on packaged food in Hong Kong. It is a measure we in the Liberal Party strongly support for the good of our health and our city.
The progress of this legislation has not been easy, however, and is only going to the vote after a vociferous debate, during which we led the fight to overturn some important aspects of the original draft law.
Why did we find some aspects hard to swallow? Because, in their original form, the regulations would have limited the choice and unintentionally removed a lot of healthy food from the tables of families. They would have forced thousands of items off the shelves - not because they were bad for us, but because of the regulation's impracticality and lack of flexibility.
The problem was not with the mass-market products bought in huge quantities and accounting for 95 per cent of all food sales in Hong Kong. Rather, it was with small-volume food items selling less than 30,000 units a year.
The original proposals required all products sold here to carry labels according to Hong Kong standards. This would have made many imported products illegal unless they were retested and relabelled.
While the government accepted that products selling less than 30,000 units a year would be defined as small-volume products and exempted from nutritional labelling, there would have been no such exemption for items containing nutritional claims.
The result? Many small-volume products with health claims would not be sold in Hong Kong because it would be impractical and too costly to retest and relabel such limited quantities. Thousands of consumers would have been deprived of choice.
The argument put forward by the food nutrient labelling taskforce that there should be no exemptions to the new rules is well-intentioned but ignores economic reality and Hong Kong's unique cultural mix. This city, with its diversity of nationalities and tastes, has as many as 15,000 different imported, packaged items that sell in small quantities, according to the Hong Kong Retail Management Association.
They include the foods bought by westerners, domestic helpers, and other expatriate communities in Hong Kong.
In terms of quantity, these items account for only 2.5 per cent of all packaged food sold in Hong Kong, but in terms of variety, they represent more than 20 per cent of the total.
What the taskforce and the drafters of the original legislation overlooked is that 90 per cent of the packaged food we buy in Hong Kong is imported and most of it is manufactured for multiple international markets.
We are a small market. It was never going to be cost-effective for manufacturers to test and repackage their items solely for the benefit of a few thousand sales a year.
There was never any suggestion that these foods involved were a health danger. But York Chow Yat-ngok's Food and Health Bureau insisted on imported foods following its own standard to the letter, even though no international standard exists and the proposed local standard differs from those of many of our supplying countries.
We faced a situation where items that were widely eaten in Southeast Asia, Japan, the Indian subcontinent, Australia, the US and Western Europe would not comply with Hong Kong's requirements.
The situation was clearly unacceptable. That is why the Liberal Party pressed hard for talks with Dr Chow, and managed to persuade him to extend the exemption. Under the revised legislation, warning labels will be put on these items informing buyers that the items are exempted from Hong Kong nutritional labelling requirements.
Critics say the concession has watered down the legislation. But I believe it is a common-sense compromise that gives more information about what is in our food without depriving us of choice and variety.
James Tien Pei-chun is chairman of the Liberal Party