An open letter to Geoffrey Podger, Chief Executive of the Fo

Dear Mr. Podger, It was reported in the press recently that the FSA proposes to introduce legislation to require restaurants and pubs to provide information about nutrition on their menus. May I ask the following questions: 1. ‑Have you researched consumer opinion on the proposal? 2. ‑Have you estimated the cost to business of compliance? 3. ‑Have you considered how, and at what cost, such rules would be enforced? 4. ‑Have you considered alternative ways of educating people on the subject of nutrition? The fact that such an idea is under consideration suggests that the FSA has learnt nothing from its earlier efforts with GMO labelling. To remind you, only two European Member States, Denmark and the UK, extended this requirement from supermarkets to restaurants. Yes, you carried out consumer research, after the event, to gauge interest, but you ignored the results. 29% of people wanted the information and 25% did not, with the rest disinterested. Hardly a stunning majority with which to justify the burden to business that the law created, especially as your website says GMO soya and maize are, as far as you can tell, safe. Consumers didn't want it, but they should have wanted it, so they had to have it. How many prosecutions have been brought under the GMO regulations? Apparently it is expensive to carry out the scientific test for the presence of GM material, so one imagines the figure to be low. Zero, for example. Fast forward from 1999 to 2002. It is important to tackle poor diet in the UK. Ignorance is a major obstacle to improved nutrition. So let's have an imaginative public information programme. Just think what this has done for drink/driving. Let's educate children to educate their parents. But let's not clutter up menus with this stuff. This may surprise you, but on the whole people go out for a good time. They don't go out to be lectured, so trying to improve them when they are eating out is silly. Far from getting across important facts, you will irritate them as well as taking the fun out of the experience. You will certainly impose a costly burden on business, and distract EHOs from more important work. Your ever-zealous officials will be taking another step towards creating menus that are so long, that they will take hours to read and make a selection. What next? Why not country of origin, animal welfare conditions, the weight of every item, day of the week when the vegetables were picked, or the farmer's name? Surely it's not too late to avoid new regulations which are unwanted by consumers, expensive to implement and to enforce, and above all, would be ineffective in achieving the objective.