This examination of health-related information on alcohol products finds high compliance with labelling requirements, except for pregnancy warnings. It also notes a significant presence of voluntary messages, but warns that industry-led messaging may be ineffective and potentially misleading.

The study used in-store data collection and web-scraping to capture label content for almost 6,000 products. It focused on mandatory elements such as container volume, alcohol content, standard drinks and pregnancy warnings, and also assessed the presence and content of voluntary health messages.

The results highlight the importance of comprehensive monitoring of the Australian alcohol market to assess and encourage compliance with existing and future labelling regulations.

Key findings

• Across all products, compliance with mandatory requirements to display container volume, alcohol content and standard drinks per container was very high.
• Pregnancy messages were present on 86% of products. 63% of products displayed the mandatory warning label and 25% displayed another form of pregnancy message .
• Prevalence of the mandatory label was markedly lower for spirits.
• A substantial number of producers may have decided to delay using the mandatory pregnancy warning until very late in the transition period.
• Voluntary health messages were visible on 65% of products, ranging from 59% for wine to 82% for premix products.
• In most instances (53% of all products), the identified message was from DrinkWise.
• High prevalence of DrinkWise messages is of concern given previous research has found them to be ineffective and have the potential to confuse and mislead consumers.
• Wine products were less likely to display voluntary health messages compared to other products.