‘British breakfast put at risk’ as EU sticks fingers into our quality jam

Defra Minister George Eustice said the “jam directive” permitting the minimum sugar content to be dropped from 60 to 50 per cent would give the industry greater flexibility and make it easier and more lucrative for UK manufacturers to export their products.

However Paul Mercer, managing director of York-based Mercer’s of Yorkshire, said that reducing the sugar in its preserves would only drive prices up.

He added: “The sugar in a jam is actually the cheapest part, so if they reduce the sugar it’s going to cost more. How is that going to make us more competitive?”

The only manufacturers who would benefit would be those that made “inferior” apple-based jams, he said.

“Apples are cheaper than sugar but it is an inferior product. Sugar makes jam set right and gives it the flavour we’re used to,” he added. “If you’re using apple as a base you don’t get the same structure, set or quality.”

The new rules would only allow producers to reduce sugar content but would not require it.

But Liberal Democrat MP Tessa Munt yesterday urged Defra not to adopt them, warning they may “herald the end of the British breakfast as we know it”.

To do so would “destroy the characteristic quality of British jams” and reduce them to a “homogenised, spreadable sludge”, she said.

She added: “If we want to export them, we need to help people to do so, but we need to keep the quality and the standard of what we see on the British breakfast table.”