EU: Food Labelling

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness will know, there are various points of view from various sectors of industry about what constitutes the best and most helpful form of food labelling. As a matter of fact, that has lain at the heart of the difficulty in reaching agreement in Europe, because there are so many divergent views around this. It is quite true that we do have very strongly held views—not least by the Food Standards Agency—about the value of traffic lights. We have equally strong views, held by certain sectors of industry, on the GDA model. As I said earlier in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, it would be desirable to have consistency, but we are not there yet. We will continue to work at that objective.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, first, has any research been done on the proportion of the population that actually reads these labels; secondly, are people able to read them; thirdly, do they understand them if they do read them; and, fourthly, what about magnifying glasses?

[Earl Howe]

One advantageous feature of the regulation, my noble friend will be pleased to hear, is provision on the legibility and font size of labels, which I am sure we all welcome. In 2009, the Food Standards Agency commissioned some research to examine which front-of-pack labelling system performed best, and the main finding was that the strongest performing front-of-pack label is one which combines the use of the words “high”, “medium” and “low”, traffic light colours and the percentage of guideline daily amount, in addition to levels of nutrients. That was the same across all socioeconomic groups.