The Government has successfully secured an indefinite exemption from EU legislation that requires all EU producers to label their products differently for different markets.The ruling follows years of campaigning for the preservation of the traditional measures of the pint and the mile. The exemption, which came into effect on 1st January 2010, enables British businesses to continue to use Imperial units on labels .
The exemption gives the British government alone the power to determine the future of these measurements, without which businesses would have been forced to meet the cost of producing separate labels for their export products. As a result UK businesses will be able to continue to label their products for domestic consumption in the same way as those for export, whether they are destined for EU countries or elsewhere in the world.