Examination of Witnesses (Questions 281-299)
MR DAVID
CROFT AND
MR ADRIAN
HILL
29 JUNE 2004
Chairman: Welcome to the meeting of the
Sub-Committee on Food Information. My apologies for keeping you
waiting a little. Our first witnesses are from the Co-op Group:
David Croft, who is the Head of Co-op Brand and Technical, and
Adrian Hill, the Policy and Standards Manager of the Co-op brand.
Welcome to the Committee and thank you for sending your written
evidence. We look forward to your oral evidence this afternoon.
Q281 Mr Mitchell: The Co-op has always
taken an enlightened position on labelling and quality improvement,
and I say that despite not being a Co-op MP; but when the Health
Committee report recommended voluntary action by the industry,
the Co-op expressed doubts as to whether voluntary action would
work. What could voluntary action by the industry achieve, do
you think?
Mr Croft: From my own perspective,
voluntary action has obviously allowed us to implement a whole
range of customer information, whether it is related to nutrition
labelling or supportive labelling in terms of the nature of the
products, the history of the products and their pedigree. One
of the difficulties of voluntary labelling going forward, particularly
when you start to get into the complex areas of nutrition, is
the question of consistency and whether that leads to more confusion
for consumers rather than the aim we all have of providing clear
information that they can readily understand.
Q282 Mr Mitchell: You mean consistency
across the industry?
Mr Croft: Yes.
Q283 Mr Mitchell: So we are all measuring
from the same stick, as it were. Is that not attainable?
Mr Croft: It is difficult to see
how it would be attainable from a voluntary basis. Whilst we have
been supporting, on nutrition labelling in particular, a number
of steps over the past decade or so, we have singularly failed
to see widespread adoption of that. It is reassuring that in the
last few weeks we have seen one of our competitors making similar
steps forward. As we look at the totality of nutrition labelling,
there are areas of inconsistency and areas where guidance perhaps
is not addressed in the same way, so there are inconsistencies
between the way the guidance is interpreted and what the legislation
states. We think that there is definitely a need for a degree
of consistency and application of those things in order to make
certain that consumers receive clear information that they can
use to have a balanced diet, or indeed in terms of any of the
product areas that we could talk about.
Q284 Mr Mitchell: You have been campaigning
for a "high, medium, low" system of marking, denoting
the nutritional quality of products, and you have been arguing
for that for a long time. What success have you had in achieving
it?
Mr Hill: "High, medium, low"
is on every product we can get a nutrition panel, which are the
vast majority. Research is ongoing. We have dipped into it every
now and then, and our market research shows that consumers like
that, in preference to pie charts, bar charts or other graphical
indications. It is based on a sound scientific basis, although
it would be fair to say that our research shows that the public
are not necessarily bothered about the science behind something,
as long as it delivers what they can use. Since we have been doing
it, it has been well received by the public and opinion formers,
but we are constrained by legislation at the moment.
Q285 Mr Mitchell: Has anybody else taken
it up? That is just your own customers and your own products.
Mr Hill: Recently, there has been
a high-profile instance: Tesco have adopted that as well.
Mr Croft: Or will be at least
taking a trial out later on this year.
Q286 Mr Mitchell: What kind of areas
would you advocate legislation or compulsion on?
Mr Croft: There are areas where
the legislation currently creates some anomalies, for example
if we were to look at nutrition labelling. One of those is on
the nutrition declaration and the use of "sodium" rather
than "salt". One of the things we have researched and
have been advocating for some time is that consumers readily understand
"salt" and are actually told by GPs to regulate the
amount of salt in their diet; and yet the full nutrition panel
requires you to put "sodium" on, and less than about
25% of consumers, when we researched it, know the connection between
salt and sodium. We think that is the sort of area where legislation
needs to be clear. Another example is where we talk about claims,
typically claims on products that are 90% fat-free. That still
leaves, obviously, 10% of the product that could be fat, which
could be a very high amount of fat. That is something that the
Government guidance already recognises as being inappropriate
and confusing, and yet it is still not enshrined in legislation,
to clarify it for the consumer. There are a number of anomalies
like that where a greater degree of consistency would be valuable
for consumers, in terms of getting the information that makes
the content of products much clearer for them.
Q287 Chairman: Why do you think there
has been, as it would appear there has, such resistance from the
industry for the traffic-light type of system that you have been
operating for some time? You have said in your evidence that you
have been campaigning since 1986 for that type of system to be
introduced, and yet it has not exactly been taken up with alacrity
by industry, so it would appear.
Mr Hill: Can we just clarify that?
We do not operate a traffic-light system, we use "high, medium,
low". We have discussed and looked at traffic-light systems,
but we have not adopted them. We think there is a difference.
Mr Croft: It is difficult to comment
on the motivations of other parts of the industry, but from our
perspective, being consumer-owned, we have endeavoured to look
at the spirit of the legislation, and trust that the spirit of
the legislation was always in protecting consumers or giving a
stronger set of advice for consumers. When we develop new approaches,
be it in terms of labelling or product authentification, then
we have done it with the interests of the consumer at heart. We
have done a lot of lengthy research with consumers, which you
would expect any retailer to do, but we have also hosted consumer
juries to give clear advice on how our policy might develop, and
particularly in the case of labelling, where there were some question
marks over the position a typical industry might take and the
position that we wish to take. We would consult our consumer jury
over the issue and see what their perception of the whole issue
was, and try and bring it down to a practical level, so that at
the end of the day you have information that is meaningful to
people. That is what we thought the spirit of the legislation
was designed to generate.
Q288 Mr Mitchell: When it comes down
to the cold cash test, do you find that more information pays?
You say consumers like it, which presumably you find out from
surveys, but does it lead to an increase in sales?
Mr Hill: It does not lead to a
decrease.
Mr Croft: Most importantly, it
exemplifies our brand as a brand that you can trust. If we are
prepared to be open and honest about what we put on our labels,
far beyond what the legislation might require or what the rest
of industry might say, to me it is about people being able to
have trust in what the Co-op does, and fundamentally that is where
we would position ourselves as being a consumer-owned organisation.
Q289 Mr Jack: Mr Croft, can you refresh
my memory: what is the recommended average daily intake of salt,
and then sugar?
Mr Croft: Six grammes of salt.
I will let you answer the one for sugar![11]
Mr Hill: Sugar, I am not too sure
of.
Q290 Mr Jack: Right, so you two are in
charge of labelling and you are giving all this information to
the customers, but we have a 50% score on the average daily intake.
In your evidence to us, you have flashes on page 2, on the front
and the back, showing calories, fat and salt. The reason I asked
that question was that I am interested to know how consumers ought
to be able to acquire a benchmark to know how they are doing,
in terms of their intake of these substances. Do you contribute
to educating your customers in this respect?
Mr Croft: I think we do in a number
of ways. As the starting point, the roundel on the front of the
pack leads you to look in more detail at the information that
is there; so our "high, medium, low" will express the
amount of each nutrient, in terms of high, medium, or low, on
the back of the pack. Wherever possible, where space allows on
the pack, we also put guideline daily amounts. With that information,
you can compare that product.
Q291 Mr Jack: On some of your pack products
you do have it! When we had the Consumers' Association as a witness,
they very kindly brought along one of your packs of jam tarts,
and it was packed full of information as well as jam; but are
you saying that somewhere on your products there is an average
daily intake box as well?
Mr Croft: Not on all of them.
We endeavour to do as much as we can where space permits. I have
an example here. Unfortunately, this is one for sponge cakes,
but we have a lot of information that is legally required in terms
of the ingredients that are present. For each of the different
cakes the nutrition declaration is using our "high, medium,
low", but because of the amount of information we have to
put on that, it is very difficult to put the guideline daily amounts
on as well.
Q292 Mr Jack: You mentioned a moment
ago your customer panels and the work that you do to assess how
your customers use the "high, medium, low". How aware
are the customers on the panel of the simple question I asked
at the beginning: what is the recommended daily intake? If they
are not, they do not have anything to relate all this information
to, do they?
Mr Croft: No, and that is where
I think "high, medium, low" starts to give them clearer
guidance. I suspect that until very recently not that many people
knew about the amount of salt that was in food, whether added
salt or salt that was naturally occurring. There has been much
debate about whether the limit should be set at six or whether
it should be different from that. There is a growing awareness
amongst consumers about what a healthy diet should comprise of,
but whether they know specifically what individual nutrition criteria
they have to achieve is still debatable. That is where clear signposting
is probably most important, to try and give an indication of the
overall trend within a product or series of products, as to being
high, medium or low in certain criteria.
Q293 Mr Jack: Whose role is, do you think,
to make certain that consumers know what the benchmark is on these
daily intakes?
Mr Croft: It is a combination
of people's roles. We have a role to play, and that is where labelling
comes into it. That is why things like "high, medium, low"
and guideline daily amounts are very important. However, clearly
there is also a role in terms of broader education—and whether
that is through the health service, or through standard education
practice, is difficult to say. We have worked closely with community
nutritionists in various parts of the country to try and generate
wider awareness of what a healthy diet means, so that people can
actively select products to support that with a bit more understanding.
The label on its own is one part of that equation, but it does
still need a broader awareness of what constitutes a healthy diet.
Q294 Mr Jack: In terms of the categories
that you sell, how do you decide within a category what gets the
"high, medium, low" indicators?
Mr Hill: Where possible and where
space permits, we try and get the full nutrition panel on all
products. Clearly, a salmon paste and a ready meal or a pizza,
are two different sizes of labels; so we do not differentiate
category to category. We try and get a full nutrition label on
every product we can.
Q295 Mr Jack: How do you deal with a
product like cheese, which may have quite a lot of salt in it
but some good calcium, and some people will say it is potentially
dangerous and others will say it is an absolute "must have"
in the diet? How does your system deal with cheese?
Mr Hill: The labels for cheese
generally preclude having a nutrition panel; so where possible
we put linear nutrition.
Q296 Mr Jack: In other words, you are
saying that the European Union labelling requirements do not allow
you to do what you want to do on that.
Mr Hill: No; it is just that the
label physically is not big enough to accommodate a legal nutrition
panel. If that was cut down, which is something we have been campaigning
for, then possibly the space may be there. In that case, we would
revert to linear nutrition, which gives it in a line.
Q297 Mr Jack: What about shelf markers;
do you use those to substitute the labelling or to make up for
the fact that you cannot put it on the product, but the customer
might like the information?
Mr Croft: We do not at the moment.
It is something we are going to trial later on this year as a
means of providing more information on the front of the pack,
on the front selling face of the product. At the moment, we do
have a roundel, and we are looking at how we can expand that,
but we feel there is an opportunity to look at shelf-edge labelling
as another way of providing more information.
Q298 Mr Jack: I ask because if you go
across the catalogue of foods, we have a very detailed amount
of information on certain packaged items, and the nearer we move
away to the naturally occurring item, the less of the information
we have just been talking about is available. How, given that
there is not a uniformity of information, does the consumer make
up their mind, if they are doing a one-stop shop at the Co-op,
that they are buying balance in their diet?
Mr Croft: In terms of loose products,
things such as bread from an in-store bakery, or products from
a delicatessen, then we also provide a manual of information that
is available on display so that people can look at the product.
It gives the full nutrition breakdown, in the same way as you
would see it on a pre-packed product. It is just a manual that
is available next to the display stand so that people can select
from that and have a reasonable understanding of what those products
are as well.
Q299 Mr Jack: Is there a danger that
the "high, medium, low" approach ignores some of the
complexities, for example, of micronutrient arguments, because
some of those things can be absolutely vital to some people's
health and well-being, and making judgment calls, for example,
on vitamins, as to whether people are getting the required dosage
of those, is quite difficult to find out. How do you resolve what
could be an apparent paradox in a very important area in enabling
people to decide in total whether they are giving themselves what
we all might like to call a "healthy" diet?
Mr Croft: You have to be wary
about micronutrients, particularly the addition of vitamins. From
our perspective, we make it clear about the presence of added
vitamins, but the "high, medium, low" also looks at
the broader nutrition. What we would be wary of are situations
whereby products are perhaps marketed on the basis of having added
vitamins, and yet still are very high in fat, for example, or
sugar, as is the case for certain chocolate spreads for example.
We are certainly not against added nutrients and particularly
added vitamins, but it is important to look at the overall product
context and make certain that by suggesting that something has
added vitamins it is automatically more healthy for you. It might
be more healthy for you than the direct comparison, but in the
case of a chocolate spread there is still a lot of fat and sugar
in there, and to eat it every day, almost regardless of the amount
of extra vitamins it gives you, might still not be very good for
a balanced diet.
11 There is no officially agreed recommended guideline
daily amount for sugar. Back
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