How Affinitus Solutions Help Manage Labelling Compliance
Is your food business ready for Natasha’s Law?
The UK Food Information Amendment, also known as Natasha’s Law, is due to be enforced on 1st October 2021, adding more pressure to the already stretched NPD, Quality and Technical departments of every food producer. Natasha’s Law will make it the legal responsibility of food producers to provide full ingredient lists and allergen declaration labelling on foods pre-packaged for direct sale on the premises.
Under the Natasha’s Law legislation, PPDS (Prepacked for Direct Sale) food will have to clearly display on the packaging/label the name of the food and a full ingredients list, with allergenic ingredients emphasised or highlighted (bold, italics different colour).
If a food product contains any of the main 14 allergens as an ingredient or processing aid, it must be included and highlighted on the label.
The 14 main allergens:
- Celery
- Cereals containing gluten – including wheat, rye, barley, and oats
- Crustaceans – such as prawns, crabs, and lobsters
- Eggs
- Fish
- Lupin
- Milk
- Molluscs – such as mussels and oysters
- Mustard
- Tree nuts – including almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, brazil nuts, cashews, pecans, pistachios, and macadamia nuts
- Peanuts
- Sesame seeds
- Soybeans
- Sulphur Dioxide and Sulphites (if they are at a concentration of more than ten parts per million)
An example of how to list allergens on food labelling
Food manufacturers are increasingly turning to automated software solutions, such as Affinitus’ Foodlogik and Chefserve ERP solutions, to make time-consuming labelling compliance management and ingredients analysis much more efficient and greatly reduce the risk of accidental human error.
For almost 10 years FoodLogik has supported its customers in meeting every food labelling law requirement. Our Product Specifications Module, now available within our Foodlogik and Chefserve ERP solutions, provides a single repository to manage all food labelling, documentation, and compliance requirements, including those imminent under Natasha’s Law.
Essential Food Allergen Compliance
The Product Specifications module aims to simplify the generation of ingredient declarations by allowing additives, allergens, nutritional, risk and other certification information to be added to your existing ingredients data. This is fully integrated within the Foodlogik or Chefserve ERP database, so there is no need for double-entry or complex interfacing to third party solutions.
Our Product Specification Module enables you to hold a single comprehensive database of product and ingredients details, which can be utilised by many processes across all parts of the business, such as production control, EPOS, and labelling.
The Product Specification Module can store data on many food ingredient aspects, including:
- Additives
- Allergens
- Nutritional values
- Suitability – e.g., is this product suitable for vegans, vegetarians, nut allergies, lactose intolerance, coeliac disease, halal, etc.?
- May Contain
- Risk
- Packaging information
- Sell by/use by dates
- Recipes – entered directly or automatically generated from the Recipe Costing module
- Ingredient declaration – automatically generated
- Ingredient search – check what ingredients do or do not contain specific additives and allergens
- Supplier certification dates and standards
- Allergen and Mandatory Nutrients report (see below)
- Quality Attribute Sheets
- Label printing and export to label printing software
What our customers say.
One of the many benefits our customers have found is where their ERP solution is integrated to an EPOS till solution, the product information held in the Product Specification Module can be sent directly to the shop EPOS terminals. If a vigilant consumer enquires at the point of purchase for a breakdown of the ingredients contained in their intended purchase, the shop staff can simply print a till receipt listing the required information – safe, happy consumers!
In a comparatively short timescale we built up a comprehensive database of additives, nutrients, allergens and shelf lives. Foodlogik automatically pulls it all together into a full product spec – a process that now takes minutes when it used to take days!
Affinitus have many years of knowledge and expertise in helping our food customers with labelling and allergen declaration requirements.
Example of an Allergen and Mandatory Nutrients Report from the Product Specification Module
Example of a Natasha’s Law compliant food label generated from the Product Specification Module, with product name, ingredients & allergen declaration and nutritional information
Talk to us today to see how we can help your food business with the pain of labelling compliance.
