THE UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has published two surveys investigating whether manufacturers are meeting country of origin and clear labelling guidelines issued by the agency in 2002.
More than 750 products were examined and a few issues were identified.
The research found that many manufacturers provided information that exceeded legal requirements and met the agency’s good practice guidance:
l 69% of all meat and meat products carried country of origin information
l 89% of products carried nutrition information
l 46% of products containing allergens used specific allergy information or alert panels such as ‘contains’ boxes
The area where the most improvements could be made was on the font size used on packaging.
The text used on many products was found to be too small, resulting in instructions, ingredient lists or date marks that were hard to read.
The Agency will discuss the findings with a range of stakeholders in March 2006 to find out why some parts of the guidance are being more widely followed than others.