In article ,
Jaques d'Alltrades writes:
|
| What is not said by the people who quote it is that, until we joined
| the EU, it was perfectly legal (in the UK) to describe a conserve made
| out of turnips and woodchips and describe it as "100% natural raspberry
| jam". It may even have been legal to describe it as "100% pure fruit
| raspberry jam".
|
| I think that practice was knocked on the head in the '50s. ...
|
| ICBA to google for it, but I'd guess that the Trades Descriptons Act
| probably predated any Common market rule to that effect, and it predated
| the EU by a very long time.

Yes, which is why I posted what I did.

A very senior judge (in the Appeal Court, if I recall) said "the
word 'natural' has no meaning in English law". Also, there was a
similar case, where it was held that the word 'raspberry' (or
equivalent) was descriptive of the product and not the contents.
With regard to lemon or orange squash, if I recall.

So "100% natural raspberry jam" could be applied to a turnip and
woodchip conserve, right up until the time we started applying EU
regulations, unless the practice of adding woodchips was banned.
But the use of solely turnips was definitely legal.

The reason that it stopped, and raspberry jams started including
at least a detectable proportion of raspberries, was the increasing
power of the press. 'Naming and shaming' did and does work against
such things.

"100% pure fruit raspberry jam" would depend on whether the English
courts held that turnips could be described as a fruit or not, and
I don't know the answer to that. It is likely, but not certain.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.