DEPARTMENT FOR
ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS News Release (News Release ref:
3/09) issued by COI News Distribution Service. 6 January 2009
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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