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.

    45/80 (page 43)
    adequate protection to anybody who considers that the food purchased is not of the nature, substance or quality demanded by him and we therefore make no recommendation regarding date marking of pre-packed foodstuffs. 168. Vending Machines. There is a growing use of the sale of food and drink from vending machines and we have considered whether any special considera- tion should apply to this form of sale. We see no difference in principle from the consumer’s point of view between sale from a machine and sale from a shop and the requirements to safeguard the consumer seem to us to be the same in each case. Since the purchaser will wish to know the nature of the product he is purchasing it is necessary for the information to be available to him before actual purchase. We therefore recommend that the contents of food vending machines should be clearly indicated on the machine. 169. Labelling of Pre-packed Faggots. We have considered the requirements as to declaration of ingredients for faggots (or savoury duck as this product is sometimes called). The ingredients are usually meat of various kinds, rusk, herbs and seasoning. We consider that it would be sufficient for this product to use the generic term “‘meat”’ in the declaration of ingredients, and we recommend accordingly. 170. Misleading Practices. Many cases of alleged misleading practices have been brought to the notice of the Committee, as well as such matters as the correct labelling of added vitamins and nutritional supplements. Many of these matters are concerned with claims made for products and we therefore intend to deal with them in our report on claims made on labels and in advertisements. 171. Transparent Wrapping Materials. We have received representations that transparent film wrappers, or wrappers carrying a picture of the food they con- tain should not be required to state the common or usual name or appropriate designation of the food. We do not consider that such wrappings are in any way different from other materials used to pre-pack food, and we therefore reject this representation. 172. Prices. It has been represented to us that labels should contain the current price of the food. We do not think that this is a proper matter for consideration under our terms of reference and we therefore make no recommendations on it. 173. Compositional Standards. As well as considering the points put to us by Government Departments and the representations received, we have looked at all the Codes of Practice issued by the Ministry of Food in Appendix E of their booklet entitled “Advertising, Labelling and Composition of Food” (H.M.S.O. 1949), and not subsequently cancelled, and those issued independently later, to see if any of their provisions ought to be given statutory force. We think that the revision of all the Codes that have not been superseded by regulation should be undertaken as soon as possible to bring them into line with current require- ments. Those most urgently in need of revision appear to be the Codes on Salt (C.P.11), Malted Milk (C.P.16) and Biscuits (C.P.20). We think that the Code on Malted Milk might well be extended to cover similar products. 174. Canned soups, which are dealt with in C.P.4, should be the subject of special labelling provisions, but we do not think we can recommend any such provisions until the question of compositional standards for canned and powdered soups has been considered. We therefore suggest that consideration