Nutrition Labels to Be Added to Meat Packages

NEW YORK —  Packaged meats sold in supermarkets nationwide will soon carry labels showing nutritional content on a cut-by-cut basis, a spokesman for the meat industry announced Wednesday.

John Francis, director of the National Meat and Livestock Board, said that the labels will show the cholesterol, sodium and fat contents as well as the amounts of calories, vitamins and minerals.

The program will be introduced to retailers at the Food Marketing Institute convention in Chicago on Tuesday, Francis said, and labels should begin showing up in supermarkets within weeks.

The consumer information system--called Meat Nutri-Facts and jointly sponsored by the Meat Board, the American Meat Institute and the Food Marketing Institute--was tested by retail chains in Syracuse, N.Y., Seattle, Minneapolis and Wooster, Ohio. Francis said that 96% of customers favored it.

Sue Hosey, head of consumer affairs for the 90-store P&C; Food Market chain in Syracuse, said: “We found that the No. 1 benefit shoppers identified about Meat Nutri-Facts was receiving direct information on calories. The second most important benefit cited was that it provided nutrition information; third was fat information.”