Conservatives call for change of wording on alcoholic drinks
January 13, 2010
In a bid to encourage safer drinking habits in the U.K. the Conservatives have called for a change in the way the level of alcohol in drinks is displayed. They claim that the present system of showing how many units of alcohol there are in a particular drink is confusing to many people and that the European system of describing the levels of alcohol in terms of centilitres of pure alcohol would be much more transparent. The Tories also claim that placing more information on labels such as the amount of calories the drink contains could be useful.
Campaigners are not so sure. Alcohol Concern have said that they have always been keen to see as much information placed onto drinks labels but say that the British public are getting the hang of the term units of alcohol. A unit of alcohol is the equivalent of one centilitre of pure alcohol.
Research shows that even though the drinks industry agreed to a voluntary code of practice in the 1990s recent research points out the fact that since then and since promising to step up levels of compliance the number of drinks which display units of alcohol on their labels is around half. Less than a fifth of alcoholic drinks manufacturers bother to present their customers with advice on safe drinking. Many in the industry believe that before worrying about the wording of warnings on drinks labels a way of forcing manufacturers to put warnings on in the first place should be established.
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