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The Consumers' Institute is reviewing its official stance on mandatory food labelling, following growing public demand for information about where the food we eat comes from.
The news comes on the back of well-publicised scares about food safety practices in China and Foodstuffs NZ's "customer-driven" decision to introduce labelling for all fresh, single-ingredient foods sold in its supermarkets.
Previously, the institute has stopped short of supporting calls for mandatory food labelling. However, institute head Sue Chetwin said that now the issue was becoming "more critical" to consumers, that stance was under review.
"We support food labelling, we support anything that gives consumers information to make better informed decisions," she said. "We are re-looking at our stand on this."
In the past, the institute had not seen country of origin labelling as "absolutely essential" to the decisions consumers made, she said. It was also a complex and potentially "very costly" area for producers.
But the current climate had prompted a "rethink", she said.
Sanitarium's decision to move peanut butter production back to Australia from China showed manufacturers, as well as consumers, were becoming more conscious of the issue.
Despite growing public pressure for all food to be labelled, Progressive Enterprises says it is not following Foodstuffs' lead. Spokesman Brett Ashley said country of origin labelling had been applied to all fresh fruit and vegetables not sourced in New Zealand for "some time".
Green Party food safety spokeswoman Sue Kedgley welcomed Foodstuffs' decision - which applied to fruit, vegetable, meat and seafood sold in Pak'n Save, New World, Write Price and Four Square stores - as a step in the right direction.
Nevertheless, she was still pushing for government regulation.
She said there had been a "backlash" in recent weeks as consumers discovered that food they had assumed was sourced locally actually came from overseas.
She had lodged a complaint with the Commerce Commission for misleading advertising over two bacon products - KiwiBacon and Taste of the Wairarapa - both of which, she claimed, sourced a percentage of pork from overseas.
She said a campaign being launched next month, "Buy Kiwi Made", highlighted the issue further.
"It's all very well to buy Kiwi-made, but often, when people think they are, they're not." she said.
Forty per cent of our pork was sourced overseas, while Watties' tomatoes came from Italy and its apricots from South Africa, she said.
Meanwhile, the Food and Grocery Council has said country of origin labelling on processed foods will never happen. Executive director Brenda Cutress said most products contained a wide variety of ingredients from many countries.
