McDonald's in breach of laws, must change new menus across Australia

McDonald's will have to change new digital menus in its 1,000 Australian outlets because they do not follow dietary laws.

In the state of New South Wales (NSW), fast food outlets must list the amount of kilojoules next the item and price of every menu in the same sized print.

McDonald's now must change its menus across Australia after the fast food chain's new display boards were found to breach labeling laws.

The hamburger giant recently introduced new menu displays which, unlike the menus they replaced, do not properly show how many kilojoules are in each item.

The previous menus were in standard print form.

The new menus make customers wait for up to a minute to view health information for each product, and only show the information for about seven seconds, Fairfax Media reported on Monday.

While the specific law only applies in NSW, McDonald's had introduced it nationally and even used it as marketing device to show it was responsible to its diners.

A McDonald's spokesman said they would comply.

"In consultation with the NSW Food Authority we have proactively made some edits to our new digital menu boards to enable additional comparison between products," McDonald's spokesman Chris Grant said on Monday.

Obesity Policy Coalition executive manager Jane Martin said it was a good decision.

Fines of up to 275,000 Australian dollars can be issued for failure to comply with NSW's labeling laws, but a NSW Food Authority spokeswoman said McDonald's was not issued a fine. Endi