The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has published revised guidance for industry and enforcement authorities on country of origin labelling, as part of its continuing commitment to improve food labelling for consumers.

The FSA consulted on updating this longstanding guidance in 2007 and has now produced the final version.

The news has been welcomed by international law firm Eversheds. A statement from the company said: “It is clear from this final version that the FSA has considered carefully the comments made by the food industry and by other consultees, and a number of elements in the draft guidance have been improved. Changes include clearer wording and the use of better examples.”

Owen Warnock, partner and food law expert at Eversheds, said: “The guidance clearly distinguishes between legal requirements and best practice. I find that users of the guidance often conflate the two, with the result that they find themselves unnecessarily constrained by the best practice section. It is not necessarily the case that to depart from that guidance makes a label illegal. The context of the rest of the label, the history of the food product in the UK and general consumer awareness are all relevant to assessing whether a label is misleading about the origin of the product and its ingredients.

“The process of making a realistic assessment of how the label may be understood by the consumer will remain one that all food manufacturers will need to carry out for themselves - staying alert to the need to resist the temptation to think that just because the words used are literally true, the labelling cannot be misleading.”