COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
Background
Under EU law specific food groups are required to be labelled with information on country of origin. These include beef, veal, fish, shellfish, most fresh fruit and vegetables and poultry meat imported from outside the EC. Other food groups including pork and pork products are covered by The Food Labelling Regulations 1996.
There is a general principle in the regulations that the place of origin or provenance of the food should be labelled if failure to do so might mislead a purchaser.
However there are areas where there is a lack of clarity or the regulations do not match consumers’ expectations. For example the legislation allows imported pork processed in this country to be labelled as Produced in the UK (as this was the place of last substantial change).