Several trade bodies, including the Food & Drink Federation, have withdrawn their support for the Food Standards Agency’s salt awareness campaign.

The FSA has set a target to cut UK consumers’ daily salt consumption from 8.6g to 6g. Its latest ad campaign, launched this week, urges consumers to cut down on cereals and bread or switch to lower-salt products.

“Our members still very much support the aims of reformulation and meeting FSA salt targets,” said FDF director of communications Julian Hunt. “But two of our biggest groups of members are no longer able to support the campaign so we must withdraw as the execution of some of the ads fails to recognise the incredible efforts made by industry to cut salt.”

A spokeswoman for the FSA defended the move. “We recognise and applaud the work by bakers to reduce levels of salt in bread, and appreciate that premium loaves in particular face challenges in reducing salt further,” she said.

“However, we have a target of reducing salt intakes to 6g, so it is important we highlight which products have the lowest levels to those who want to know how to reduce salt.”

The Grocer 9/10/09

Real Food Comment: This story highlights the issues that abound in the food industry - simply put, that much lipservice is given to initiatives to improve the quality and nutritional benefits of the highly industrialised foods that some of these big manufacturers produce but the fact is that none of these businesses will actually do anything that may hurt their bottom line.

Whilst members of the FDF still say that they agree with the aims of the FSA, they are not prepared to support the campaign if the FSA then highlights the foods that are the worst offenders (ie them). It might be simpler to just 'reformulate' their products straightaway, but having weaned their customers on foods with a high salt content (that makes up for the lack of any real flavour in their products), they obviously realise that sales will fall through the floor if they do so. It can only be a matter of time before the FSA retracts their advice on cerelas and bread.