Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans he has to promote (a) local and (b) British produce through food labelling.

Accurate and informative food labelling helps people know the quality and provenance of their food. Most food for sale in the UK is labelled with the country of origin and producers are developing labelling to show the provenance of their food whether it is local to the community in which it is sold or made in Britain. The Government wants this to continue and will do what we can to protect the UK’s iconic food and drink.

Protected Food Names, for example Traditional Welsh Cider and Traditional Welsh Perry, offer an effective way to demonstrate great local and UK food and we are working to increase the number of products covered by the protected designation of origin (PDO), protected geographical indication (PGI), and traditional specialities guaranteed schemes (TSG): the newest being Conwy Mussels.