Trade Talk Pity the imperfect picture of food policy

A picture of the Conservative Party's overall food policy is hard to find. Apart from aiming to move the areas related to nutrition and diet from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to a new Department of Public Health, origin labelling features prominently. That's a pity, because FSA surveys have shown the majority of people are more concerned about price.

Obesity and the damages of alcohol are singled out as areas in need of attention. It is ironic therefore that the Tory party website features a video of Clarissa Dickson-Wright criticising existing food labelling for not having more prominent country of origin labelling of ingredients. We all love listening to Clarissa's delicious lack of political correctness in relation to food. For that reason, if the Tories are serious about food-related health issues, then perhaps her involvement was a Freudian slip.

That said, recent research, to be reported in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, discovered surprisingly that the mortality of overweight people over 70 is lower than for underweight people in that age group. Amazingly, it is the same as for people of normal weight. If this is true, perhaps there should be a government campaign to discourage people who are over 70 from dieting!

Returning to origin labelling, Clarissa's video attacks the description of a corned beef bap as 'Great British' on the grounds that the corned beef is from Brazil. For heaven's sake, not only is the idea of having corned beef in a sandwich definitely British, we don't make corned beef here. If such labelling was deemed to be misleading, it could interfere with say, Oxford English marmalade being called English because the oranges come from Spain.

More seriously, British goats' cheese producers would be in the firing line because they are forced to use some imported goats' milk, as there aren't enough UK goat herds to supply growing demand. Might pressure to declare which batches come from imported milk affect the cheesemakers' ability to promote their cheese as British because they cannot use all British milk? If the Tory policy was pursued to its logical conclusion, a growing sector of British food production could be penalised.

The implications do not appear to have been thought through in an effort to please farmers, of whom a minority see barriers to imports as a way of promoting their own production. In any case, misleading food labelling is already an offence under the existing regulations. This should be sufficient to deter would-be fraudsters who seek to pass off imported food as British.

Clare Cheney director general Provision Trade Federation mailto:clare.cheney@provtrade.co.uk​