In our previous installment of this particular editorial endeavor for the Best Food Importers website we began an overall presentation of the the new general food labeling requirements that came into effect at the end of the last year through the new Regulation (EU) No. 1169/2011. This regulation came in effect beginning with 13th of December 2014. We shall now delve deeper into the details brought by the changes in legislatively imposed regulations regarding the general labeling of food products. The first thing we must be aware of is that the mandatory labeling information must be given priority over any voluntary labeling information.

The font is an topic of regulation also, as all mandatory requirements must be given in minimum font size, an “x height” of 1.2 mm – Times New Roman, 8 font – with an exemption for smaller packs where largest surface area is of less than 80 cm2, where the “x height” of 0.9mm – Times New Roman, 6 font – is deemed to be sufficient. There are other exemptions on mandatory labeling requirements for packs of small sizes. If largest surface area is less than 10 square centimeters then only legal name, allergen labelling, date mark and quantity declaration are mandatory. In addition to this derogation, the list of ingredients must be provided through other means or must be made available at the request of the consumer.

Next are the requirements and guidelines regarding the largest surface area as follows. For rectangular or box-shaped packages, the determination of the ‘largest surface area’ can be considered to be one entire side of the package concerned (height x width).
For cylindrical containers, the largest surface area can be considered to be the area excluding tops, bottoms, flanges at the top and bottom of cans, shoulders as well as necks of bottles and jars. And lastly for this particular installment of our multi-part article, the name of the food needs to include an indication of the presence of the following where applicable:

Image courtesy of Andy Mangold – Some rights reserved

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