British farmers are celebrating a major step forward in their battle to get accurate country of origin food labelling across the EU.

Until now, it has been possible for UK food manufacturers to import cheap meat and poultry from abroad – where hygiene and animal welfare standards are often much lower – and use it in products like pies and sausages marked legally “Made in England.”

But after sustained lobbying by the NFU, the European Parliament has now accepted that meat products must be labelled with the country where the animal or poultry was reared rather than processed.

This will be a great help to British consumers, says the union, who in recent years have become much more choosy about the origins of food they buy.

The new laws will come into force after legal inspection and the lengthy process of translating them into dozens of different languages.