Report on food labelling.

  • Great Britain. Food Standards Committee.
Date:
1964
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on food labelling. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    33/80 (page 31)
    CHAPTER IV: SPECIAL LABELLING PROVISIONS FOR PARTICULAR FOODS Section A. Intoxicating Liquor PROVISIONS IN EXISTING REGULATIONS (Articles 4(4) and 8 in L.F.O. 1953). 106. The general requirements as to labelling of ingredients, contained in Article 4(3) of the present Order, do not apply to intoxicating liquor pre-packed for sale as such. Instead there has to be an appropriate designation of the product as defined in Article 4(4) and some additional declarations are required. These are described in paragraph 112 below. 107. The appropriate designation for intoxicating liquor is defined as follows :— ‘Appropriate designation’”’ means a name or description, being specific and not a generic name or description, which shall indicate to a prospective purchaser the true nature of the product to which it is applied and in particular— (a) such appropriate designation shall include or be accompanied by the name of the country or countries of origin of the liquor; (b) geographical names which are not names for distinctive types of intoxi- cating liquor shall not be applied to liquor produced in any locality other than the particular locality indicated by the name; and (c) where any liquor is described in terms which might infer or suggest that it is a distinctive type of intoxicating liquor which has originated in a particular country or locality and the liquor is not the produce of that country or locality, the name or description shall be immediately pre- ceded by an adjective indicating the true country or locality of origin printed in such a manner as to be substantially as conspicuous as such name or description. 108. The effect of this definition depends entirely on the meaning given to the expression “distinctive types of intoxicating liquor’’. This has not been decided by the courts, but the definition implies that some geographical names are the names of distinctive types of intoxicating liquor. It seems impossible to discover any criterion—other than usage—for deciding which are and which are not and therefore the definition does not protect any geographical name which could possibly be regarded as generic, if any wine-producer in any country wanted to use it, provided he preceded it by his own country’s name in adjectival form. Two important exceptions to this situation are “‘Port”’ and ““Madeira”’ which are already protected by the Anglo-Portuguese Commercial Treaty Acts of 1914 and 1916, 109. It can be argued that the use of a geographical name for a wine which is not produced in the area indicated by the name is misleading, even if that name is qualified adjectivally by a different geographical name; that the nature and quality of a wine are due to a number of factors such as soil, climate and trad- itional methods which are peculiar to the district of origin and, though a wine of a similar type may be produced elsewhere, it should not be regarded as the same wine; and that wine sold as a “‘Ruritanian Graves” for instance, is simply not a Graves but, so long as geographical names for wines are not protected, it is not easy for those who are not experts to understand that wines of a different nature can be sold under the same name because they are of a similar type and that the adjectival qualifications are all important.