The aim of the group is to increase awareness of issues surrounding the dairy industry and focus on economic issues affecting the dairy industry and producers.
Hosted by group chairman Dan Rogerson MP, it was attended by the great and the good from the cheese and dairy industry, along with several members of parliament.
It was good to see food & farming minister David Heath giving his support to the event, and I’m sure I spotted former food & farming minister Jim Paice – or rather Sir Jim Paice, as he is now. Sir Jim, well respected by the farming industry, lost his job in Prime Minister Cameron’s reshuffle last September. Seeing them both present in the same room, I wondered how they would get on together. Would there be any tension between the pair? I didn’t sense any. The atmosphere was good, and the cheese was great!
Dairy UK communications director Simon Bates, however, was in combative mood. Welcoming everyone to the event, he said: “As cheese makers, in maintaining the integrity of our products, we face a number of often contradictory pressures across a range of issues.”
He went on to highlight two of these: salt and front-of-pack labelling.
Cheese is made with just a few basic ingredients: milk, a starter culture, salt and rennet. “Yet,” said Bates, “UK cheese makers have managed to take these few ingredients and turn them into over 700 named varieties. Each has its own unique taste, texture and nutritional composition.”
A 30g portion of Cheddar contains 125 calories, 10g of fat and 6.5g of saturated fat. “But you are also getting protein, vitamin A, calcium, phosphorus and B vitamins. And, doesn’t it taste good?”
Bates told his audience that cheese was responsible for only 4% of the nation’s salt intake. “The Department of Health advises that adults don’t consume over 6g of salt a day. That 30g portion of Cheddar cheese contains 0.5g of salt, or less than 10% of your recommended maximum intake.”
This week is National Salt Awareness Week. Bates predicted that we would hear a lot more in the media about salt and cheese. As people read those messages, they should bear in mind that salt is added to cheese for safety and technical reasons. Without it, many products would be inedible and unsafe.
“As an industry, we continue to work on overcoming the technical barriers to reducing the salt content of our product, and no doubt in time we will succeed,” he said. “But we must always put customer safety and acceptability at the heart of these efforts. We cannot compromise on safety.”
The second challenge was front-of-pack labelling. The Department of Health wants to put in place a consistent front-of-pack labelling scheme across the UK.
The Dairy UK man told the audience the proposed scheme is a hybrid which uses traffic light colours, the words ‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’, and guideline daily amounts (GDAs).
“We have a long and detailed list of concerns about this proposal,” said Bates.
For cheese makers, the major problems are that the proposed system focuses only on the negatively perceived nutrients: fat, salt, sugar, saturated fat and energy. “It therefore doesn’t give a balanced view of the nutritional composition of a food, or its positive contribution in delivering nutrients in the UK diet,” he said.
Secondly, the Department of Health has not issued the latest criteria on which the colour banding would be based, but it appears unlikely to distinguish between a standard cheese and a reformulated variety.
“The dairy industry has made huge strides to reduce fat and salt in its products. Not recognising this on-pack could stifle innovation and reformulation,” Bates warned. “Neither will it give the consumer an accurate view of the nutritional differences between products.”
As I watched the politicians tucking into (and obviously enjoying) all the cheese, I wasn’t alone in hoping they would take Mr Bates’ messages back to their colleagues in the corridors of power.
© FoodBev Media Ltd 2024