Local Euro MP and Labour Agriculture spokesman Brian Simpson has supported calls for processed food to be adequately labelled showing the county of origin of the main contents.  Speaking in the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee on a Commission proposal to make such labelling only a voluntary scheme, Mr Simpson highlighted the problems facing consumers, especially in the area of ready meals and processed food.

“In the UK, most of our ready meals are full of meat, not from Britain and the EU, but from the Far East and South America.  Yet the consumer is not made aware of this on the label.  Chicken meals in particular, are full of chicken meat from Thailand and other Asian countries where animal welfare and husbandry standards are not as high as they are in the UK or Europe. This concerns me” stated Mr Simpson.

In their labelling proposal the European Commission recognises that a problem exists in processed foods and ready meals, in that they fail to inform consumers of the origin of the mail ingredients, but their solution is to introduce a voluntary not a mandatory labelling scheme and it is this aspect that worries Mr Simpson and other MEP’s. 

“I believe consumers in the North West have a right to know, not only what ingredients are in their ready meals, but where the main ingredients actually come from.  Then they can take a decision whether to buy or not on the information available to them.  To ask for a voluntary scheme is a Commission cop-out that is giving in to the giant supermarket chains.  A compulsory system is what is needed so that everybody knows what they have to and the consumer knows what they are buying” concluded Mr Simpson