Foodlaw-Reading
Dr David Jukes, The University of Reading, UK
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DEFRA Consultation Response, 9 January 2023
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DEFRA response: Consultation on changes to legislation relating to alcoholic drinks in Great Britain This documernt is available on this site (click on image) Provided under the Open Government Licence. The original document was accessed from webpage available at: |
The short cosultation took place in November 2022 and was not reported on this site. The following is the Background section from the response document and gives details of what was being considered.
13 January 2023 Update: The Draft regulations have been published: Draft Alcoholic Beverages (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023
Purpose of this document
This document provides a summary of responses to the government’s consultation on proposed changes to legislation relating to alcoholic drinks in Great Britain and the government’s response to them.
This consultation opened on 2 November 2022 and closed on 23 November 2022.
10 responses were submitted, 8 via Citizen Space and 2 via email. This includes 5 businesses, 4 trade associations and 1 social responsibility body and regulator.
Background
The United Kingdom is one of the world’s largest producers, exporters, and importers of alcoholic drinks. We are the largest spirit drinks exporter in the world: this includes more exports of whisky and gin than any other nation. We are also the world’s second largest importer of wine with a growing domestic industry. Supporting the wine industry is a priority for both the economy and jobs. The government of the United Kingdom is working to support the interests of the alcoholic drinks industry and consumers, both in respect of regulatory reform, but also by securing ambitious trade agreements with some of our biggest international trading partners.
The UK signed a free trade agreement with New Zealand on 28th February 2022. Annex 7A to the Agreement concerns wine and distilled spirits. To implement the agreement, the United Kingdom will make three minor changes to domestic legislation on how wine and alcoholic drinks can be described and marketed on labels. These changes allow producers and sellers more flexibility in the information they choose to include on alcoholic drink labels and will be optional for producers to adopt.
This consultation sought views on the likely impact of the three changes needed to implement the UK-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (UK-NZ FTA):
(a) first, the UK government proposes that wine products should be allowed to show alcoholic strength to one decimal place;
(b) second, the UK government proposes that when several grape varieties are used in the production of a blended wine and are shown on the label, the named varieties must total at least 95% of the volume of the wine;
(c) finally, the UK government proposes that the term ‘alc/vol’ may appear directly after the alcohol content figure displayed on the label of any alcoholic beverage.
