The UK’s Food Standards Agency has called for better labelling of potatoes after a survey it carried out showed that a third of potatoes sampled were incorrectly labelled.
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The FSA said that retailers are increasingly marketing the differences between varieties of potatoes, encouraging customers to choose different types because of their particular characteristics such as taste and texture.
However, the results from the FSA’s survey reveal that consumers aren’t always getting the type or quality of potato they think they are paying for.
Out of 294 potato samples taken, results showed that 33% of the potatoes were wrongly labelled. Of these, 49 were not the variety they were claiming to be and 47 were not labelled with sufficient information, such as no variety name was given.
“It is clear that consumers are not always getting what they are paying for, and this is unacceptable. Whilst mislabelling of potatoes in some shops and on some market stalls may be down to incorrect variety labelling at wholesalers or lack of knowledge of the labelling requirements, the bottom line is that consumers are losing out,” said Rosemary Hignett, head of food labelling and standards at the FSA.
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By GlobalDataNearly all of the incorrectly labelled samples came from smaller, independent retailers, fruit & veg shops and stalls and wholesalers, the FSA said.
