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Labelling country of origin of fresh fruit and vegetables

(5 Posts)
Bakingmad0203 Wed 12-Jul-23 13:52:15

I’ve just come back from shopping at our local greengrocer. I bought some ( expensive) loose tomatoes, but when I asked the shop assistant where they were from she didn’t know. None of the fresh produce had any country of origin labelled on the shelves. Is this no longer a legal requirement since we left the EU?

Redhead56 Wed 12-Jul-23 14:06:21

I bought loose beef tomatoes and baking apples from Aldi and they had stickers on them ‘British’.

NorthFace Wed 12-Jul-23 14:41:00

It's still a requirement according to this, last updated 7 December 2022:

www.gov.uk/guidance/comply-with-marketing-standards-for-fresh-fruit-and-vegetables

As far as I am aware, any referencer to EU legislation should be read as retained EU law.

There is a delayed change coming from 1 January 2024, that EU origin must be replaced with UK origin where applicable, but otherwise, I believe the regulations remain the same.

Witzend Thu 13-Jul-23 12:42:09

That’s why I hardly ever buy fruit or veg from the local market - much as I’d like to - because you can hardly ever tell where anything’s from, and I do prefer to buy U.K. seasonal whenever possible.

We still have milk delivered, and they will deliver a lot of other items. I once ordered carrots, only to find that they were from the Netherlands. So that was definitely a one-off.

Bakingmad0203 Thu 13-Jul-23 14:50:59

Thank you Northface that is very useful. I had already gone on the Gov.uk website but it was not up to date, so it wasn’t much use. You have found a more recent version!

By the way, the 2 very expensive tomatoes I bought from the green grocer yesterday were completely tasteless, so I won’t be buying those again.