Touchy Feely Food Packaging

One issue that never seems to go off the boil in the European Parliament is that of the labelling of food products. Today, the issue was debated in the EP's internal market committee, where MEPs chewed over the question of how much information should be put onto food packaging.

Politicians often fail to understand that as far as the general public are concerned, less legislation is generally better, and so the latest attempt to beef up the proposal might be a little hard for consumers to swallow.

Although he himself was absent, the committee heard that the Swedish liberal, Ollie Schmidt, has suggested adding nutritional information on packaging in braille.

Braille is, to put it simply, quite big. It takes up a lot of space. The French winemaker, Chapoutier, has added braille to its wine labels for many years, and is to be commended for doing so. But it is hard to imagine how this might work with, for example, a packet of chewing gum. Adding braille to a crisp packet might also be seen as problematic. What would be the cost to industry, and ultimately to the consumer, of such a proposal?

It is still only January, but this may well be remembered as one of the year's oddest suggestions.