London, Jan 4 - Tesco, Cadbury Schweppes and Coca Cola will next week spearhead a new food labelling system, putting them on a collision course with a rival government scheme aimed at combating obesity in Britain.
Their coalition of 24 manufacturers and retailers will launch a 4 million pounds ($8 million) advertising campaign from Jan. 8, following government pressure for labelling to encourage healthier diets.
But the coalition's adverts will promote a system of guideline daily amounts (GDAs) of salt, sugar and fat that goes head-to-head with the UK's Food Standard Agency's own official campaign for "traffic light" labelling.
Some manufacturers and retailers have balked at the agency's plans to slap red "stop sign" logos on the kind of sugary and fat-laden colas, chocolate bars and breakfast cereals popular in snack-happy Britain.
One million British children are forecast to be obese by 2010 and the UK's creaking national health service has said it will struggle to cope.
The coalition is instead launching its own system without colour-coding.
The Agency said in a statement, "Our independent published consumer research is clear -- it's the use of traffic light colours that best help consumers to make healthier choices."
"Without a traffic light colour code... shoppers can't always interpret the information quickly and often find percentages difficult to understand," it added.
Food labelling is a hot topic in the developed world with spiralling obesity and related illness putting huge strain on medical services.
The hands of the Food Agency are tied in its battle with the big retailers and food groups as it has no legislative power, but the Department of Health, which does, said it hoped to persuade the industry to adopt colour-coding.
The Food Agency's voluntary traffic-light plan has won the backing of national grocers J. Sainsbury, Waitrose, Wal-Mart's Asda, Marks and Spencer and McCain.
The coalition's campaign, which will run for 18 months and has divided the British industry, is the biggest joint initiative ever by the food industry with GDA labels added to nearly 40 percent of UK retail food and drink packs.
Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer which is leading the campaign, has 4,000 products already under its own plan and will be marking up thousands more.
Yet, labelling is not showing uniform signs of success.
Studies in the United States have shown although half of Americans regularly read food labels, many of them lacked the skills to understand them.
"All moves to improve labelling have to applauded," Tesco Chief Executive Terry Leahy said last year. "But our scheme works best for us and our customers."