Food Standards Agency
Thursday 28 August 2008
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What is RSS?Falsely describing, advertising or presenting food is an offence, and there are a number of laws that help protect consumers against dishonest labelling and misdescription.
Consumers should be able to be confident with their choice of foods and be able to buy according to their particular requirements, be it for diet and health, personal taste and preferences, or cost. They want to be able to make comparisons with similar products, knowing the information on the label is correct.
They have a right to expect that the food bought matches the description given on the label and that they get what they pay for.
Part of the Food Standards Agency's role is to help prevent mislabelling or misdescription of foods. Mislabelling does not normally give rise to safety issues; nevertheless, when done deliberately it constitutes the crime of fraud.
In some cases, the names of foods we buy are protected by law, and must comply with certain compositional regulations.
In other cases, such as fish fingers, there may be no such standards, but the food still needs to be described accurately and should not be misleading.
Food authenticity is all about whether a food matches its description. If food is misdescribed, not only is the consumer being deceived, but it can also create unfair competition with the honest manufacturer or trader. The description of food refers to the information given as to its name, its ingredients, its origin or processes undergone.
Misdescription in itself is nothing new. Food fraud has been around for a very long time – probably as long as food itself has been sold.
In the past, basic foods such as flour, spices and beer were adulterated with cheaper ingredients. Nowadays misdescription can take many forms:
Not having the necessary composition for a legal name – in order to be called 'chocolate', for example, the food must have a certain amount of cocoa solids. Similarly, in order to be called a 'sausage', it must have certain amount of meat in it.
Substitution with cheaper ingredients – adding low cost ingredients to a more expensive product, such as diluting olive oil with vegetables oils.
Extending a food – perhaps with water or other fillers, such as adding water to orange juice, or offal to meat products and not declaring it.
Incorrect origin – incorrectly labelling the true origin of the food or ingredients in terms of:
Incorrect quantitative declaration – giving the wrong amount of an ingredient e.g. declaring the wrong amount of meat in burger
Legally, there are a number of areas that regulate labelling:
Back to topThis requires food to be marked or labelled with certain requirements such as:
The Food Safety Act lays down compositional rules for:
These define what can be properly described as:
Occasionally, misdescription can affect your health or safety. People who cannot eat certain foods because they are intolerant or allergic to them may suffer severe or life threatening reactions.
It makes it much more difficult to avoid these foods if they have incorrect or inaccurate labels. A contaminated product could also cause illness if it was deliberately being passed off as authentic.
The FSA has an extensive programme of surveillance specifically devoted to food authenticity where we carry out ad hoc checks on foods.
We also have a research programme devoted to developing new methods and techniques to detect when products have been adulterated or misdescribed.
Back to topFor further information on the Food Authenticity Programme contact Dr Michelle McQuillan on 0207 276 8159 or by email michelle.mcquillan@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk
Back to topThe Netherlands and UK held a conference on food labelling on 15-16 February 2006 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Guidance notes for businesses on food labelling regulations including guidance notes on place of origin, QUID, food (lot marking), what food should carry a 'use by' date and nutrition labelling.
The European Commission issued a proposal for a new Food Information Regulation on 4 February 2008. This proposal follows an EU-wide review of both general food and nutrition labelling legislation, which began in 2004.
UK candidate list of health claims (Article 13).
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