How many pubs offer 'home-made' steak and kidney pie? In this neck of the woods? Hundreds. However, I doubt that your average diner seriously believes that his dinner has been prepared in a domestic kitchen.

Although some food industry manufacturers continue to use grossly misleading labels, I just can't believe that consumers are taken in by them.

Freshly-minced ginger' for a product with a shelf-life exceeding a year, for example; or traditional home-baked recipe with buttermilk' for bread containing two preservatives, emulsifiers and hydrogenated fat.

And what about farmhouse-style gammon ham selected by hand, formed from selected cuts of pork legs in natural juices with added water and pork gelatine'?

That doesn't sound like ham made in a farmhouse to me!

The Food Standards Agency's report on food labelling followed a nationwide survey of 220 products, nearly half of which proved to be misleading or ambiguous.

Two years ago the FSA issued advice on the use of eight marketing terms used on food labels in the UK - fresh; pure; natural; traditional; original; authentic; home-made and farmhouse. The guidance described when and how these terms should be used to ensure that consumers were not misled.

To check the extent to which the guidance was being followed, last summer the FSA enlisted the help of enforcement officers from 15 local authorities. They were each asked to collect food samples that used one or more of the terms, and to establish whether the labelling used on the products followed FSA guidance.

The results showed continuing problems with the use of all eight terms, especially farmhouse' and traditional'.

For example, in 18 of the 24 farmhouse' cases there was clear evidence, or indications, that they were actually produced in industrial premises.

Of the 75 samples that called themselves traditional', 31 used modern ingredients such as artificial additives, preservatives or sweeteners.

Terms



Farmhouse
Traditional
Home-made
Original
Natural
Fresh
Authentic
Pure

No of
samples


24
75
21
25
23
26
15
11

No of
adverse
reports

18
33
9
10
8
7
2
1

% of
adverse
reports

75%
44%
43%
40%
35%
27%
13%
9%

"We know that consumers often place particular value on terms like fresh, pure and natural when buying food," said Rosemary Hignett, the head of food labelling and standards at the FSA.

"They rightly expect foods labelled with these terms to be different in some way from products that don't carry these types of descriptions. For instance, they don't expect items labelled fresh' to have a four-week shelf life. They don't expect items labelled as pure' to have added ingredients."

And they certainly don't expect products with ingredients described as natural to have used artificial preservatives and additives.

"We've based our guidance on these expectations and our survey shows that many manufacturers are taking account of this and are giving consumers clear descriptions," added Rosemary. "But others obviously have a long way to go."

I have a degree of sympathy with Cartmel Village Shop Sticky Toffee Pudding Company which unfortunately found itself among offenders in the home-made' category of the FSA report.

The puddings did indeed used to be produced in a domestic kitchen which is why they are labelled The Original and Genuine Home-made Sticky Toffee Pudding'. But such was the demand for the product that about four years ago Jean and Howard Johns moved to purpose-built premises on the outskirts of the village.

Neither industrial park' or factory-produced', I might add.

However, the Johns have removed home-made' from their labels to comply with the FSA guidance. Note that original' and genuine' remain.

In fact, the FSA accepts that uptake of the guidance may take some time because some businesses, especially small ones, hold significant stocks of labels. Cartmel Sticky Toffee Pudding Company being a case in point the labels were changed at the first available new print-run.

It remains to be seen whether others will follow suit.

Among the worst-case scenarios in the FSA report were so-called 'traditional' sausages. Read this and weep "The use of additives such as sodium phosphate stabiliser and sodium ascorbate antioxidant is not in keeping with purchasers' expectations for sausages described as 'traditionally-made'."