Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the National Farmers' Union
FARM ASSURANCE
ORGANISATIONS
As requested, please find attached a summary
of farm assurance organisations. This should not be viewed as
exhaustive but does demonstrate the number and complexity of schemes
which exist.
UNDERSTANDING OF
RED TRACTOR
LOGO
The Government agreed with the recommendation
of the Curry Commission that the Red Tractor should be a baseline
standard that all food should attain and that the standards underpinning
it need to be owned by the whole food chain and managed by Assured
Food Standards on their behalf.
The incorporation of all existing sector standards
setting bodies into an independent Assured Food Standards (AFS
II) under the Red Tractor logo has now been completed. As debated
at the Efra Select Committee, the next urgent priority is to communicate
the meaning and benefits represented by the Red Tractor logo to
the consumer.
As a major stakeholder in the new AFS II, the
NFU is committed to supporting the Red Tractor scheme. We believe
that as we move towards a decoupled, market focussed industry,
the Red Tractor will provide the customer and the ultimate consumer
at all stages in the chain with the necessary confidence that
all products bearing the logo have been produced to independently
accredited production standards and that the integrity of the
product is assured.
LABELLING
The NFU strongly supports the need for clear
unambiguous labelling. In the important areas of health and nutrition,
labelling must be easy to understand but not over simplistic such
as the proposed "traffic light" approach which the NFU
does not support. The NFU favours a form of nutritional information
which provides, for example, the amounts of fat, salt and sugar
in a product as a percentage of the recommended daily amounts
(RDA).
We should also like to reiterate the point made
in our evidence concerning the importance of clear country of
origin labelling of food. Consumers have a clear interest in where
food was primarily produced and processed. We are concerned that
under current regulation and practice, labels can be highly misleading.
The NFU recommends the adoption of product of
. . ., packed/processed in . . .. For composite products, the
country of origin should relate to the key ingredients eg for
a chicken curry the information should relate to the primary source
of the chicken. In this instance, product of the UK made with
chicken produced in . . ..
We have also taken the opportunity to provide
the Committee with what we believe to be a grossly misleading
example of labelling even though legal [not printed]. Most customers
could be forgiven for believing that this label refers to product
produced in the UK or at the very least, the EU. On closer examination,
a customer might believe it to have been sourced in Northern Ireland.
Only when the label is magnified can it be discovered with difficulty
that this is in fact Brazilian beef packed in Northern Ireland.
This example was purchased in a major supermarket in Shrewsbury
on 6 June 2004.
July 2004
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