UK retail chain Tesco, a major customer for New Zealand’s meat exporters, has had a change of heart over traffic-light nutritional labelling,  says online food trade magazine Just-Food.

This is a major change in strategy for Tesco which up to now has supported the Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) approach, the magazine says. Responding to consumer research, Tesco made the announcement last week that it will now be using a hybrid labelling system, including both GDA and traffic light systems.

Philip Clarke, Tesco’s chief executive said Tesco has led the way by giving shoppers clear information about the food they eat and was the first retailer to put nutritional information on the front of its packs in 2005 when it rolled out its GDA labels.

“We always listen to our customers and they have told us by combining our popular GDA labels with traffic light colour coding we can make it even easier for them to make informed and healthy choices about the food they buy,” he said.

The news has been welcomed by British health minister Andrew Lansley, NGOs and public health groups.

The consumer research was conducted by Penn Schoen and Berland and involved 1,002 UK adults aged over 18 in a quantitative online survey.