The language of European food labelling regulations

Professor Angela Smith recently attended the 4th FoodKom Seminar at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.  Her paper, 'Tiny Print and Traffic Light Chaos', looked at how European food labelling regulations are applied in the British context to front of packaging.  Angela showed how the non-mandatory nature of the system has led to potentially confusing food labelling, exploring the semiotic properties of the packaging.  She concluded that the lack of standardisation and the non-mandatory nature of the system is often unhelpful and even confusing (particularly to those of declining eye sight), but that it could nevertheless be of use to the knowing consumer and so is of limited help.