I know I said I was on holiday but I just had to blog about this article from today’s Mail Online:
This story, which originally came from the Sun, was reported by the Mail in a somewhat less blatantly anti-EU way yesterday.
From today’s article:
Cadbury has removed the famous phrase ‘glass and a half’ from its Dairy Milk bars following claims it failed to comply with EU metrication rules.
The phrase was introduced 80 years ago to Britain’s best-selling chocolate bar to explain the amount of milk in every half-pound bar.
However, the famous slogan has now been replaced with the words: ‘The equivalent of 426ml of fresh liquid milk in every 227g of milk chocolate’.
…
A spokesman said: ‘Because EU regulations state that by 2010 all weights and measures on packs must be in metric, given our long run times we felt it was sensible to make that change.
…
He said the metrication rules had been checked with lawyers and trading standards officers, who confirmed a change was necessary.
However, there are concerns its advice was wrong and that the change, will will have involved a very heavy cost, was completely unnecessary.
Experts at the Trading Standards Institute (TSI) said the EU rules should not apply in the Cadbury case.
TSI spokesman, Andy Foster, said: ‘The Cadbury slogan is well known by consumers and should not be confused or caught up with food labelling laws.’
He said the slogan was not part of the ingredients list, and so was not affected by rules regarding food labelling.
‘Therefore the Trading Standards Institute would have no objection to the continued use of the famous slogan unless it was considered misleading by consumers,’ he said.
In summary, the EU has not “forced” Cadbury to do anything. Cadbury were simply being overly cautious. But this hasn’t stopped the Mail from trying to claim that the EU forced Cadbury to make the change.
As the PCC has decided to let newspapers lie in their headlines for the sake of brevity, nothing can be done about the Mail’s headline. They could quite easily have chosen a more accurate headline that still would have been nice and short, but they chose not to.
Yet more proof that the PCC is less than effective when it comes to regulating the press.
'The equivalent of 426ml of fresh liquid milk in every 227g of milk chocolate'is ridiculous. It's a slogan, I think they've got the wrong advice really. Yet this might be just a little publicity stunt anyway.
Yeah, there's something not quite right about that. I can see why they might put "The equivalent of 426ml of fresh liquid milk in every 227g of milk chocolate" to supplement the glass-and-a-half thing and explain what they mean by it. But if they were replacing it, why stick with the original quantities? Why not go for a nice round "The equivalent of 375ml of fresh liquid milk in every 200g of milk chocolate"?