Examination of Witnesses (Questions 190-199)
MS JEANETTE
LONGFIELD
22 JUNE 2004
Q190 Chairman: Good afternoon, Jeanette
Longfield. You are the coordinator of Sustain?
Ms Longfield: Yes, that is me.
Chairman: Welcome to the Committee this
afternoon. Thank you for coming along to give oral evidence this
afternoon. Bill Wiggin will start the questions.
Q191 Mr Wiggin: How helpful is the current
food labelling requirements assisting consumers in following a
balanced diet?
Ms Longfield: Mainly rubbish,
really. They are incomplete, incomprehensible, voluntary, confusing,
and fairly useless.
Q192 Mr Wiggin: In your evidence you
refer to loopholes in the current labelling regulation, for example
baked goods are exempt from declaring their weight, alcoholic
drinks from their list of ingredients. Excepting for a moment
the limitations of information required by present legislation,
what about the uniform application? What do you feel about that?
Ms Longfield: That some goods
seem to be exempt?
Q193 Mr Wiggin: Sorry?
Ms Longfield: What do I feel about
some goods apparently being exempt?
Q194 Mr Wiggin: The fact that it does
not apply uniformly across all goods.
Ms Longfield: I rang up a colleague
in Laycors this afternoon before I came: that is the Local Authority's
Coordinators of Regulatory Services, the Trading Standards Officers
who enforce food labelling law. I said: "Why is it that some
products do not seem to be weighed, measured?" He said to
me: "Ah, well". I will truncate the half an hour into
a couple of minutes. It is some relic of old weights and measures
legislation, apparently, and cross-referring to food legislation
because weights and measures covers more than just food and taking
definitions from one bit of law that does not really apply to
another bit of law and you just end up with these stupid gaps.
He agreed that it was anomalous and ought to be sorted out and
it was probably on somebody's list of things to do at some point,
but nobody has done it because it is kind of boring.
Q195 Mr Wiggin: How would you like to
see it develop?
Ms Longfield: I just cannot see—there
is no reason that I can see that is defensible for having any
foods that are exempt. It surely cannot be beyond the wit of
the collective expertise of the scientific community, of officials
and legislators to come up with a system where everything is covered?
How hard can that be?
Q196 Mr Wiggin: It is expensive. What
about traffic lights; you heard about that I think. What does
Sustain feel about the traffic light system?
Ms Longfield: Sorry, the reason
why I am grinning is because about 20 years ago, I think, a very
similar system was suggested, explored exhaustively, and everybody
said, "That is too hard, we do not understand it" and,
now we are having another look. Again, I think it is not beyond
the wit of man, woman and beast to come up with a system that
makes it easier. In Australia they have Pick the Tick, and in
Sweden they still have the key hole system, in other parts of
the world they probably have other ways of doing it. None of them
is perfect, but it is surely not impossible to make it easier;
even if they do not turn out to be traffic lights it will be something
that makes it easier.
Q197 Mr Wiggin: What do you do with things
like very small amounts or difficult foods: unpackaged meat, vegetables,
that kind of stuff?
Ms Longfield: With loose foods
I am sure if you could solve the problem of simplifying the information
you want to give, you have to have labels and tickets somewhere,
stuff with a price on.
Q198 Mr Wiggin: On the menu when you
go into the restaurant, I think?
Ms Longfield: With loose foods
you can put it on wherever you put the ticket information, what
the price is and what have you. With catering, it depends on the
catering. If it is in a sandwich shop or a fast food restaurant
where basically day in and day out you are selling the same stuff,
made to a recipe, do the analysis, get the label: not hard. If
you are eating somewhere posh where it is cooked from scratch
every day and you are probably not going to eat there very often
because it is posh, so it does not matter if you eat there to
be honest.
Mr Wiggin: It does if you are legislating
there unfortunately, but thank you very much.
Q199 Joan Ruddock: I want to ask you
about action at government level and how well coordinated you
think the departments are in terms of food policy and the communication
of food messages et cetera?
Ms Longfield: They are not. The
Department of Health and Food Standards Agency fight. Defra does
not really get involved most of the time. DfES is too busy with
other stuff. It is just a complete dog's breakfast really.
Mr Wiggin: On labels.
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