united-kingdom food
How is it legal to sell soup as Oxtail Soup when it contains less that 1% of Oxtail?
<p>Looking at the ingredients of my dinner, Oxtail Soup, I noticed that it actually only contains 1% Oxtail and contains 4 times as much beef.</p>

<p>I'm wondering how the company can get away with calling this soup Oxtail after an ingredient that only makes up 1% of the final item you are buying.</p>

<p>The question can be generalized to all food products. Are there any laws relating to food that specify amounts of ingredients that are required to be able to use that ingredient in it's name.</p>

<p><a href="http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32011R1169&amp;from=EN" rel="nofollow">EU Regulation 1169/2011</a> Article 17 requires that</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>The name of the food shall be its legal name. In the absence of such a
  name, the name of the food shall be its customary name, or, if there
  is no customary name or the customary name is not used, a descriptive
  name of the food shall be provided.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I am not sure how you look up whether a food has a legal name. However, the food is customarily called oxtail soup, so using the customary name would be allowed. Were one to concoct a new food of oatmeal and cucumber, it could not under those regulations be called "pork and peas" because the descriptive name is not "sufficiently clear to enable consumers to know its true nature", and also does not "distinguish it from other products with which it might be confused".</p>

<p>It seems that the requirement to disclose the percentage of oxtail in the soup is intended to allow consumers to pass their own judgment on the appropriateness of the name "oxtail soup."</p>

<p>The <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1996/1499/contents/made" rel="nofollow">Food Labelling Regulations 1996</a> are somewhat complex, and there is a certain amount of attention given to meat labeling, but I haven't found anything that establishes a minimum percentage of oxtail for a soup to qualify as oxtail soup.  This is perhaps not surprising, since if there <em>were</em> a minimum percentage, it would probably be higher than 1%.</p>

<p>Other links of interest:</p>

<p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/food-standards-labelling-durability-and-composition#meat-products" rel="nofollow">https://www.gov.uk/guidance/food-standards-labelling-durability-and-composition#meat-products</a></p>

<p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/food-labelling-giving-food-information-to-consumers#naming-the-food-product" rel="nofollow">https://www.gov.uk/guidance/food-labelling-giving-food-information-to-consumers#naming-the-food-product</a></p>

<p><a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/2075/contents/made" rel="nofollow">http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/2075/contents/made</a></p>
