Last weekend, the Times UK wrote that shoppers are being deceived by labels on meat and dairy products. It claimed that the packaging conceals the reality of modern intensive farming by showing idyllic country scenes of animals roaming free outdoors.

It raises the question do consumers understand how a burger or chicken nugget started out its life and do they actually know what they are eating and where their food has come from.

This a huge challenge for the agri-food supply chain which includes the farmer, food processor and retailer.

The current generation of consumers are further removed from farming than ever before. For many food comes from a fridge, a carton and a company. The farmer is so far back the chain and invisible once the modern family sits down to dinner.

Marketing

So is it any wonder that people have become dependent on marketing and images on packaging to help them connect with food? The multi-billion euro food industry including retailers are playing to this.

Walk into any supermarket aisle and the shopper is bombarded with images of friendly farmers and cute animals as if the food comes from the farm out the road. In reality, the baby carrots were probably flown in from Spain and the strawberries from Israel.

So will the UK environment secretary Michael Gove’s pledge last week to reform labelling rules to ensure that consumers are no longer misled about farm animal welfare standards and where their food is coming from?

Choice

Consumers never have had more choice. But telling consumers that the porridge is GM-free and gluten-free on a label doesn’t explain that oats cannot contain gluten and can never be genetically modified anyway.

This is a real dilemma in this clean labelling era. How far do marketeers take it? Is it the role of our legislators? What in consumers' minds does a frozen chicken burger that claims it is 100% chicken, look like on a farm and what does the consumer believe they are eating? Chicken breast or chicken brains? Or does all this really matter? After all, it is all protein.

Where does personal responsibly come in where people start to educate themselves and simply ask at the point of purchase what is in this food, where has it come from and how was it produced?

Then weigh up their beliefs and values against this food and then let them decide what to put into their body. Consumers need to understand that food doesn’t come from a can or a packet and that ultimately every food starts somewhere on a farm and with a farmer.