Misleading country of origin signs on food

H

Henny Penny

Registered User
Messages
559
I was in Aldi this morning buying groceries. The sign in the veg section said 'Irish Celery 76c per bunch'. When I got a bunch of celery the country of origin was clearly marked as Spain. There was no irish celery. Was the spanish celery married to an irish celery or of irish celery parents I wonder? This is not the first time I've noticed this. Tesco are notorious for having 'irish' strawberries from the USA. Don't busy shoppers have enough to do without having to double check everything. End of rant.
 
Did you make a complaint to the manager of the store and, if so, what did s/he say?
 
Meat and dairy products also have a label on them for country of origin. Note that this is the country where the food was processed, not necessarily where the cow grazed. Anyway, many cheeses sold as "Irish Cheddar" will have a UK label on them for the country of origin. I don't know how they get away with this, but presumably it is allowed; certainly it is so widespread that it doesn't seem likely to be either a mistake or an offence.
 
MOB said:
Anyway, many cheeses sold as "Irish Cheddar" will have a UK label on them for the country of origin. I don't know how they get away with this, but presumably it is allowed; certainly it is so widespread that it doesn't seem likely to be either a mistake or an offence.
Click to expand...

Damn Bureaucracy!
 
EU regulations allow the marketing of a food product as being from a particular 'country of origin' if, as MOB suggests, the food product is processed in that particular country.

Hence one of the biggest examples is that the vast majority of 'Italian' olive oil sold today is in fact (theoretically) inferior Spanish olive oil trucked to Italy for 'processing' - i.e. packaging.
 
'Produced in Ireland' can mean anything, and this is a loop-hole which is frequently used.

If the celery started life in spain, and was repackaged in Ireland, then they could say the celery was 'Produced in Ireland' - at a stretch, this could maybe constitute Irish celery.

post crossed with sherman's

Reminds me of a story I heard once when a person was selling irish souvineers to tourists. A new directive required the place of manufacture to be displayed on the product. Unfortunately, leprechauns don't sell so well with 'made in china' written on them. The enterprising solution was to put the Irish for 'made in china' on the merchandise!
 
umop3p!sdn said:
The enterprising solution was to put the Irish for 'made in china' on the merchandise!
Click to expand...
No joke! I remember wooden clothes hangers manufactured in Sweden with something like An tSualainn tír a dhéanta (?) stamped on them!
 
Don't forgot this works the other way too -- Ireland benefits hugely from "transfer pricing" whereby multinationals export profits to Ireland for taxation purposes by "manufacturing" (final assembly, disc duplication or other processing) the goods in Ireland.
 
ClubMan said:
No joke! I remember wooden clothes hangers manufactured in Sweden with something like An tSualainn tír a dhéanta (?) stamped on them!
Click to expand...

Found one of those clothes hangers the other day!!!!
 
I remember reading somewhere that France sells more wine than it produces. Apparently bulk container loads of the stuff is shipped to France from South America and then sold on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top