Clearer guidance on food labelling
Last week Environment Secretary Hilary Benn announced new measures to cut food waste by reducing the widespread confusion over food labels.
Research has shown that consumers often confuse ‘use by’ and ‘best before’ dates, and end up throwing away perfectly edible food that has passed its ‘best before’.
There is also confusion stemming from the use of stock control dates – ‘display until’ and ‘sell by’ – which are often taken as an indication of food safety.
Defra will work with enforcement officials, the food industry, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) to make it clearer when food is safe to eat. The current FSA guidance on food labelling will be revised, storage guidance will be improved so that consumers understand how to store food correctly, and stock control labels may be phased out.
Speaking at the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management’s Futuresource conference, Mr Benn explained how thousands of tonnes of food are thrown away every year due to confusion over labels such as ‘best before’.
He said: ‘“When we buy food it should be easy to know how long we should keep it for and how we should store it. Too many of us are putting things in the bin simply because we’re not sure, we’re confused by the label, or we’re just playing safe. As part of our war on waste I want to improve the labels on our food so that when we buy a loaf of bread or a packet of cold meat, we know exactly how long it’s safe to eat.”
Further information
Page last modified: 15 June 2009
Page published: 15 June 2009