Food (mis)labelling

[RogerS]

If you saw on a packet that it was 'Organic' how much of the contents would you expect to be organic?

100%?
75%?
50%?

In fact, under our food labelling regime, it only takes just one ingredient to be organic for the manufacturers to claim that the product is organic. Regardless of the percentage of that ingredient in the product.

How about 'gluten free'? If you saw a packet labelled 'gluten free' and you were coeliac, you might be tempted to buy the product only to have a violent reaction. Yes, you guessed it, under our food labelling regime, if only one ingredient is gluten free then the manufacturers can claim the product to be gluten free. If you really want to be sure that there is no gluten then you need to look for 'gluten 0%'.

Good, eh?

 

[MrJay]

Brilliant. Fortunately Google can be handy in verifying bizarre claims before posting them as matters of fact upon the internet and it turns out that organic labelling in the UK is subject to EU legislation (EC Regulation 2092/91) thusly.

95% of your ingredients must be organic to qualify for a product to be labeled as organic chips or whatever.

70% - 95% allows you to refer to organic ingredients as organic in the ingredients list

less than 70% entitles you to not use the word organic anywhere at all.


:wink:

 

[RogerS]

Well..I got the information from LOML who heard it on a casebook programme on Radio 4. Guess they need to do their research as well...at least as far as the organic labelling goes.

I still believe that the 'gluten-free' statement is valid.

 

[Adam]

I'm not so sure on Gluten Free. My mum is coeliac and has never had any trouble with any of the wide range of gluten free products. Its not just her experience, I, also, spent several months on a gluten free diet.

If you are in the coeliac society, they also produce a black book of all the "normal" foods and in depth analysis of whether they currently are or aren't. For example (and this is from memory so could be wrong), a cadburys flake is dairy free but cadburys dairy milk isn't.

Adam

 

[RogerS]

Reactions will depend on individuals. LOML has a very strong reaction and is now very sceptical as far as 'gluten-free' labelling goes.