Mis-labelling the true origin of food products

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Irish food producers like Cappoquin have only themselves to blame because their standard of label information provided on products is appallingly poor.

Typically when one buys meat or chicken, for example in France, the producer or retailer will have it labelled (translation) “Born in France, reared in France, slaughtered in France” – and in the case of chicken they will usually state what the bird was fed on.

While this detailed labelling is not legally required, it makes it very clear to the consumer the precise origin of the product they are buying. And products that don’t have full disclosure of origin stick out a mile. It makes the consumer wonder where indeed they did come from! Nobody has to wait for a dozy government or EU to tighten up labelling regulations - they can do a decent labelling job themselves and show up their backstreet competitors.

Similarly one sees well known brands of Irish cheese on sale in Ireland, and when you examine the oval packaging plant country code, more often than not it comes from BE or GB or “UK” (Ukraine’s rightful country code, unofficially being used by many organizations in GB as a second country code for their kingdom)!

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ISO country codes: http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists/english_country_names_and_code_elements.htm#u..

brianthebard

Its disgraceful what companies get away with. I'm sure you know that meat is regularly imported, repackaged and sold as "produced in Ireland". Sargent said he was going to do something about this last year, but clearly he had bigger issues like picking out a hybrid car for himself or something. If people knew the true origins of the meat they are buying in the supermarket they might be more inclined to buy Irish, real Irish.