The government marked its own homework on grocery labels.

Here's the report card.

The Product Labelling Regulatory Review landed this week, all 16 recommendations of it, and Cabinet has already picked which bits it wants. So instead of guessing what might happen to the ingredients list on your muesli box one day, we can actually just read the thing and see what's been decided, what's still up in the air, and what's been left for later, whether that's caution or just convenient timing.

Short version: nothing's changed on your kai labels yet. But the government has told us exactly what product information it’s willing to shift digital, and it's worth checking that against a word Regulations Minister David Seymour reached for this week, and used in a way you might not expect: equity.

Two different questions

Accessibility asks something small and annoying and important: can you actually access the product information, right now, standing in the aisle? Equity asks something bigger: once people can get the product information, does the whole system treat everyone fairly, given that nobody starts from the same spot?

Think of it as a door. Accessibility asks whether your door opens. Equity asks whether the building, once everyone's inside, treats them fairly. If your door doesn't open, it doesn't matter how fair the building is once you're in it. You're not in it.

These are not the same question. Answer the wrong one and you can quietly regulate exclusion.

The "cuts both ways" defence

When Consumer NZ told Seymour that people without a working smartphone could lose access to information the old physical label guaranteed, he accepted it was a “challenge”, but said equity “cuts both ways”. And even then, all he had was "more languages": "with digital labelling, you can have more languages, so it can be more inclusive”, followed by an aside about how "one of our issues is actually trying to stop kids getting these digital devices, so, there may be an issue there, but there will also be more inclusion by different languages and more information."

He was asked whether the door opens. He answered by describing the building. More languages on a label is genuinely more equitable, once you can open the label. It does precisely nothing for the person who can't open it. Those are two separate problems wearing the same word, and solving one doesn't touch the other. This is the sleight of hand: swap "equity" in for "accessibility" and suddenly the multilingual QR code looks like it's cancelled out the access gap. It hasn't. It's just changed the subject.

What got the green light?

Of the 16 recommendations, the digital labelling ones are the headline act. Seymour's already put a number on them publicly, $111 million over ten years, and the report confirms that figure belongs specifically to the digital labelling package. It's not money in anyone's pocket directly, it's the report's own estimate of net benefit to the country as a whole, mostly businesses saving on printing costs. The report claims some of that helps consumers too, but the specific benefit and the specific cost this piece is about, easier access for people who can already use a QR code, and the loss for people who can't, are both things it admits it left unquantified.

So, what did Cabinet sign off on:

• Recommendation 1, a promise to write some rules later, principles for digital labelling, not written yet. 

• Recommendation 2, a promise to build a system later, a "national framework" that includes piloting digital twin systems, not built yet.  

• Recommendation 3, the one thing that's actually concrete: letting country of origin and importer or manufacturer details move to digital-only. 

That's it, the whole accepted digital labelling package. Cabinet also separately signed off on unrelated OTC medicine changes.

In fact, the report explicitly boxes allergen labelling off as something the whole exercise is meant to protect, stating as a guiding principle that changes must "not reduce consumers' ability to make safe and informed choices (through mechanisms such as allergen labelling)." So as of right now, on paper, allergen information staying on physical packaging is the plan. It's just not the law.

The pitch for why any of this is worth doing at all? As Seymour said, a QR code can hold more than a printed label ever could. More languages, real time updates, more space. But it's a gain in what the information contains, not in whether you can get to it. Getting to it means owning a smartphone, mobile data, a signal at the checkout, and knowing what to do with the code once you've found it. Lose any one of those and you've got less than the old label gave you, despite the promise of more.

Wait, it’s illegal to leave info off product labels, right??

My son Taika is allergic to peanuts. Nothing in the approved changed, so far, digitises his allergen information, it's still required on the physical packaging. But here’s what I’m watching: the report sets out its own test for what's allowed to go fully digital later, once the "principles" in Recommendation 1 actually get written. The test asks three things: is this needed at the point of sale without connectivity, for safety reasons? Is there a public health reason for it to be immediately available on the label? Would it be unreasonable to expect someone to visit another location, like a QR code, to find it?

Run allergen information through that test and it fails all three in exactly the direction that should keep it physical, it's a safety issue, it's a public health issue, and yes, it would be unreasonable to ask Taika to visit a website mid-aisle to find out if something might put him in hospital. By the government's own logic, allergens shouldn't move. The problem is that logic currently lives in a report, not a regulation, and reports don't stop a future Cabinet from deciding differently once the "principles" get drafted.

Even the barcode people think this needs a safety net

GS1 New Zealand, the outfit that actually runs the barcode standard, isn't some outside critic here. GS1 NZ's Chief Executive, Peter Stevens, told Morning Report it was "reasonable" for consumers to expect critical information like allergens and ingredients to stay on the physical package as well as digitally, an idea he called a "digital twin". The people behind SmartFacts, the QR pilot GS1 NZ actually built, are telling you digital labels shouldn't stand alone.

And that's not just industry talk anymore, either. The report itself recommends piloting "digital twin systems that link physical and digital product information", tested for their impact on consumers "including individuals with a disability". Officials didn't wave off Stevens's idea. They wrote it into Recommendation 2.

Who asked for digital product labels?

The push started with around 120 businesses, industry groups and representative bodies the Ministry for Regulation consulted to shape the review's scope. GS1 New Zealand was one of them. That's the origin story, and it's a compliance-cost story, not an access one.

To be fair, the picture isn't quite that one-sided by the end. The report says the Ministry also consulted consumer and health groups while developing its recommendations, including Allergy New Zealand and Diabetes New Zealand. And the report names the accessibility problem directly: "digital labels... present challenges for users with disabilities, lower levels of digital literacy, or material wellbeing”, citing 2023 census data that 5 to 10 percent of households don't have a mobile phone at all. It even recommends future rules be designed with "alternative access pathways”.

So the accessibility gap isn't a blind spot. It's a named, cited, acknowledged problem, sitting in a recommendation rather than a requirement.

Europe's already had this fight

BEUC, the European Consumer Organisation, has fought this exact battle across food, cosmetics and chemicals, and won some version of it every time. Digital labels get to exist, but only as an add-on. For cosmetics, the European Commission proposed letting fragrance allergen information move to e-labelling, BEUC pushed back, and the final regulation put every fragrance allergen straight back on the physical ingredients list. Chemicals went the same way, digital labels allowed only as a supplement, never a replacement, with suppliers required to offer another way to access the information if there's a barrier to using the digital label.

But on what our review is actually going to decide, groceries, the EU is stricter than in any of the three sectors above.Under EU food law mandatory food information, allergens, the ingredients list, nutrition, has to be on the physical package, full stop. Only extra, non-mandatory information can go digital. Wine is the one exception, and even there, allergens stay physical. The EU's food industry has been lobbying for a broader digital labelling rule since at least 2022, and it hasn't gotten one. The EU didn't let "more information available" stand in for "available to everyone", it kept asking which question the digital labelling solution was actually answering.

Which makes Seymour's own justification worth putting under the same light. He didn't say New Zealand was copying the EU's rules. He said digital labelling "supports export growth because international markets are moving ahead with digital product information”. That's a claim about direction of travel, not about what those markets actually settled on. The one thing New Zealand's review has actually approved so far, country of origin and importer details, holds up fine against that claim, the EU doesn't treat that information as needing physical protection either. But "moving ahead" isn't a justification that stays scoped to just this recommendation. It's a general argument, and if it gets pointed at allergens once Recommendation 1's principles actually get written, the EU's own record says no. It's drawn that line every single time it's had the chance to.

So whose issue is this, actually?

Food safety groups have a stake here. Disability rights groups have a stake here. Both are right to. But underneath both of those is a digital equity issue: digital labelling could genuinely help some people and lock others out at the same time. Larger text and multi-language options are wins. But for people without a smartphone, data, or a signal in the aisle, the same change doesn't add a new option, it removes access outright. Trading one accessibility gap for a different one isn't obviously progress, it's a different set of people locked out.

It’s the same shape, every time: the government has the stats. Their own report names digital access as a barrier, in their own words, with their own numbers, 5 to 10 percent of households without a mobile phone. Naming a barrier and funding a fix for it are two different acts, and so far, only the first one's happened.

The second one isn't hard to picture. Device banks for people who don't own a smartphone. A connectivity subsidy for the data the QR code assumes you'll have. Digital skills funding for the part everyone forgets, knowing what to actually do once the code is in front of you. None of that is radical. It's the same toolkit digital inclusion work already runs on, just not yet pointed at a grocery aisle. The trade-off in digital labelling is real, and now it's named. But naming it and weighing it are different acts, and Seymour's only ever done the first one.