mass caterer

(2) The free movement of safe and wholesome food is an essential aspect of the internal market and contributes significantly to the health and well-being of citizens, and to their social and economic interests. (3) In order to achieve a high level of health protection for consumers and to guarantee their right to information, it should be ensured that consumers are appropriately informed as regards the food they consume. Consumers’ choices can be influenced by, inter alia, health, economic, environmental, social and ethical considerations. (9) While the original objectives and the core components of the current labelling legislation are still valid, it is necessary to streamline it in order to ensure easier compliance and greater clarity for stakeholders and to modernise it in order to take account of new developments in the field of food information. This Regulation will both serve the interests of the internal market by simplifying the law, ensuring legal certainty and reducing administrative burden, and benefit citizens by requiring clear, comprehensible and legible labelling of foods. (10) The general public has an interest in the relationship between diet and health and in the choice of an appropriate diet to suit individual needs. The Commission White Paper of 30 May 2007 on a Strategy for Europe on Nutrition, Overweight and Obesity related health issues (the ‘Commission White Paper’) noted that nutrition labelling is one important method of informing consumers about the composition of foods and of helping them to make an informed choice. The Commission Communication of 13 March 2007 entitled ‘EU Consumer Policy strategy 2007-2013 — Empowering consumers, enhancing their welfare, effectively protecting them’ underlined that allowing consumers to make an informed choice is essential both to effective competition and consumer welfare. Knowledge of the basic principles of nutrition and appropriate nutrition information on foods would contribute significantly towards enabling the consumer to make such an informed choice. Education and information campaigns are an important mechanism for improving consumer understanding of food information. (11) In order to enhance legal certainty and ensure rationality and consistency of enforcement, it is appropriate to repeal Directives 90/496/EEC and 2000/13/EC and to replace them by a single regulation which ensures certainty for consumers and other stakeholders and reduces the administrative burden. (15) Union rules should apply only to undertakings, the concept of which implies a certain continuity of activities and a certain degree of organisation. Operations such as the occasional handling and delivery of food, the serving of meals and the selling of food by private persons, for example at charity events, or at local community fairs and meetings, should not fall within the scope of this Regulation. (17) The prime consideration for requiring mandatory food information should be to enable consumers to identify and make appropriate use of a food and to make choices that suit their individual dietary needs. With this aim, food business operators should facilitate the accessibility of that information to the visually impaired. (18) In order to enable food information law to adapt to consumers’ changing needs for information, any considerations about the need for mandatory food information should also take account of the widely demonstrated interest of the majority of consumers in the disclosure of certain information. (19) New mandatory food information requirements should however only be established if and where necessary, in accordance with the principles of subsidiarity, proportionality and sustainability. (22) A list should be drawn up of all mandatory information which should in principle be provided for all foods intended for the final consumer and mass caterers. That list should maintain the information that is already required under existing Union legislation given that it