CHOICE survey shows Food Standards failure Alan Griffin - Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs, Assisting the Shadow Minister for Health

Media Statement - 6 April 2004

Today's CHOICE magazine survey of orange marmalade shows you don't always get what you think under our simplified Food Standards system.

CHOICE has shown that some manufacturers are clearly taking advantage of the fact that they don't have to meet a minimum standard to use common terms like marmalade.

In 2001, Labor argued that this could undermine community standards by allowing meat pies without meat, jam without fruit and ice-cream without cream.

Although those particular foods were addressed with minimum compositional standards maintained, products like marmalade were not protected.

Labor warned then that this was a green light to some manufacturers to undermine conventional standards.

The CHOICE survey shows that this is exactly what is happening.

Orange marmalade without orange fruit or just peel and pulp is not on.

Europe has a marmalade standard, the UK has one also.