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Consumer calls grow for accurate food labelling
THE European Parliament is being called upon to give in to popular demand and give consumers clear country of origin food labelling so they can be certain where their food comes from.
The EU's environmental and agricultural committees are due to discuss the regulation of food information to consumers in a report later this month.
Current legislation allows food packaged or handled in any way to be listed as British even if the actual food was farmed abroad and earlier this year the Yorkshire Post revealed that the EU had begun to "prepare the ground" for possible legislation requiring all food to be labelled saying where it was farmed.
Now the NFU wants them to take the final step towards closing the loophole once and for all.
The NFU's deputy president Meurig Raymond said: "Labelling needs to provide accurate, clear and relevant information so consumers can make an informed choice.
"People who want to buy great British food want to be certain that is exactly what they are getting.
"The current guidelines are clearly not working. There are loopholes in the current legislation leading to clear cases of misleading labelling – such as giving the last place of processing (for example, ham) and the place a product was packed in (for example, cheese) – that finally need to be tightened up."
Mr Raymond also quoted figures from a recent Which? survey that appeared to show increasing support for accurate country of labelling among consumers.
The study showed 80 per cent of those asked wanted country of origin labelling for meat while a further 76 per cent wanted to see it introduced for dairy products.
The Yorkshire Post has been running the Clearly British campaign for the past two years to try and close the loophole in law and give farmers a level playing field in the market place.
The high standards of welfare which farmers are required to operate increase their operating costs, leaving them vulnerable to cheaper foreign imports which are not produced to the same standards yet legally labelled as being British.
The Tories have pledged to bring in an honest labelling system if elected next year, with major retailers Tesco and Morrisons having already agreed to back the party's Honest Food campaign.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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