New labelling rules will add to firms' workload

Companies face the prospect of dealing with far more compliance notices, said Jamie Weall, senior law food advisor at advisory and testing services firm Exova. These would be much easier for Trading Standards officers to use as a means enforcing breaches of the new Food Information Regulations (FIR) than going through lengthy court procedures, he added.

"The industry will need to provide more resource to deal with such notices and ensure that their systems and procedures are in place to make sure that all of the provisions of the new FIR are adequately covered,"​ he said.

Most serious offences​

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) plans to use the court system to enforce only the most serious offences, such as those contravening food safety, said Weall. Less serious offences, such as non-compliant names and ingredient lists; inaccurate quantitative ingredient declarations; and illegible information would fall under the compliance notice system, he added.

Enforcement officers​

"These changes would result in many more notices being issued by enforcement officers because they do not need to comply with the current legal regulations to put an offence before the courts,"​ said Weall. Businesses should be prepared to challenge compliance notices when they were inappropriately issued, he added.

"The use of compliance notices is not new. They are already used in another piece of food legislation, The Poultry Meat (England) Regulations, but many businesses think that they can't be challenged,"​ he said. "That's simply not the case and businesses must be prepared to challenge them when they are not justified."​

A DEFRA spokeswoman said: "We'll be consulting on the new Food Information (England) Regulations, including the proposals around enforcement, later this year."​

The bulk of the requirements under the FIR will not apply until 2014, with nutrition labelling becoming mandatory in 2016.