Government blasts ‘nonsensical’ EU food label rules

Benn told the Oxford Farming Conference today (6 January) the government was pressing the EU to change rules that allowed products that were made in the UK using foreign foods to be labelled as British.

“Under current European regulations, a pork pie processed in Britain from Danish pork can be legitimately labelled as a British pie. That’s a nonsense and it needs to change,” he said.

Benn added the government was working to see what could be done to introduce “voluntary country of origin labelling” in the UK, and called for less dependence on imported products.

“If there’s demand, production should follow. So the answer is to buy more British and eat more British,” he said.

Meanwhile, Conservative MEP Chris Heaton-Harris is reported to have branded European proposals for food labelling as “barmy”.

According to Farmers Guardian, Heaton-Harris said that making nutritional information and guideline daily amounts (GDA) mandatory would make packs too confusing.

He added that the new rules, which include a minimum 3mm font size, was “a perfect example of well-meaning bureaucrats coming up with a barmy idea that is unworkable in the real world”.

Heaton-Harris was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.

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