Farron backs NFU's 'Flag it' campaign

Cumbrian MP Tim Farron is supporting the Nation Farmers' Union's campaign aimed at improving the clarity and accuracy of food labelling.

Most of the UK's largest food manufacturers and supermarkets are already signed up to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs's 'Principle on Country of Origin Information' labelling code, which is designed to ensure that information about the country of origin for food products is labelled clearly to avoid confusion for consumers. However, the NFU feel that there are still too many examples of food labelling which is misleading consumers.

A 2010 study by consumer rights group Which? found that 'around eight in ten people think it's important that country of origin labelling is on meat and poultry and around three quarters felt the same about dairy products and fruit and vegetables'. Tim is calling on people across Cumbria to get involved with the NFU's 'Flag It!' online campaign by either choosing to 'Like' the NFU's Facebook page or by taking photos of any food labels or signs which are misleading and upload them to the Facebook page.

Commenting Tim said: "This is a really important campaign to get behind as the majority of people have the right to know where their food comes from. If you were to do a survey of shoppers across the UK I would imagine that most people would prefer to by food grown and reared in the UK to support our farmers and agricultural industry, but have difficulty determining which products are truly British due to misleading labelling. Buying British is the best way to ensure that you get both quality of produce and the highest environmental and animal welfare standards, so it's absolutely the right thing to do."

"So please get involved by sending in photos of good and bad examples of packaging and let's help the NFU to build the momentum of the campaign so that we can ensure better labelling and greater support for the British farming industry."