‘Country of origin’ means what?
When you read a label on food saying ‘Produced in the UK’, what do you think it means? Is the UK where the food was grown or raised, or it the country where the food was processed?
The Food Standards Agency has published new research about country of origin labelling. The Agency wanted to find out more about how people understand and use food labels. The results will help to inform discussions about a European proposal on food labelling. Key findings included:
- there is awareness of ‘origin labelling’, but it is not a main concern for consumers when shopping
- when asked on which foods they would like to see origin labelling, people most frequently mentioned meat and meat products
- price and food safety information on labels were considered by consumers to be, on the whole, more important than country of origin labelling
- consumers are confused about whether ‘country of origin’ refers to where animals are born, raised or slaughtered or whether this refers to where a food product has been produced.
European labelling rules being proposed will require businesses that make origin claims to provide further information, so that people will know where their food actually comes from, not just where it was processed.
