Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
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Hilary Benn calls for clearer food labelling
Environment Secretary Hilary Benn today called on supermarkets and food companies to give shoppers clearer information on where their food comes from.
He made the call as he urged people to "buy more British and eat more British" and stressed that protecting the environment is vital to increasing food production.
Speaking at the Oxford Farming Conference, Hilary Benn said:
"When you buy a car you know its service history. When you buy a house you get a detailed survey. So why do we accept knowing so much less about what we are putting into our bodies?
"Under current European regulations, a pork pie processed in Britain from Danish pork can legitimately be labelled as a British pie. That's a nonsense and it needs to change."
He said that while the Government was pressing in Europe to improve labelling so that it shows where an animal is born, reared and slaughtered, he planned to meet food industry representatives to discuss how they could "get ahead here by voluntarily introducing country of origin labelling."
Hilary Benn praised the quality and quantity of food produced by British farmers and said that food security was a priority:
"I want British agriculture to produce as much food as possible. No ifs, no buts.
"We could produce more fruit and vegetables here in the UK - the market is there, so what's holding us back? If there's demand then production should follow. So the answer is to buy more British and eat more British."
Mr Benn said that food security was part of a global challenge in which environmental protection and increasing production went hand in hand, saying:
"The idea that protecting our soil, our water, our habitats, our landscape, and the very climate on which all of these depend , and encouraging production, are in competition with each other is to miss the point completely. Why? Because our long-term food security depends on looking after those things.
"It's about looking after the land today to sustain our capacity to produce food tomorrow."
Mr Benn said that British farmers had a key role to play in striking this balance, describing them as "the producers of our food but also the stewards of our land", and offered to sponsor an award for low carbon farming.
He pledged to continue supporting farmers through better regulation and doing "only so much as is necessary". On the subject of EU proposals to restrict the use of certain ingredients in commonly used pesticides, which it is feared could hamper food production, he said:
"No-one can say for sure what their impact will be. That's why I have been arguing against the pesticides regulation which could hit yields by limiting the crops that can successfully be grown in the UK for no recognisable benefit to human health, which I take very seriously."
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