FIR webinar
Steve Spice
Steve Spice, Campden BRI’s head of regulatory affairs, said booking your printer, ensuring training systems were in place and updating your labelling policies and electronic specification systems were his top three FIR tips.
Last time round he answered questions from Tate & Lyle Sugars, Mizkan Europe and Asda.
The other burning questions he couldn’t leave unanswered were:
“Will it be a legal requirement for front of pack nutritional information to be in the traffic light format set by the Food Standards Agency?” David Taylor, technical manager, Kershaws Frozen Foods
Spice: “Repeating nutrition information on the front of pack is a voluntary act and, hence, not one mandated by the FIC, but if it is done, as is the case with many brands, the FIC sets out some principles that need to be abided by.
“It is no longer the Food Standards Agency that deals with nutrition as that responsibility has been passed on to the Department of Health (DH). In June last year, after doing research, they set out their final design of consistent nutritional labelling based upon the FIC and listed a number of businesses that would be adopting it. At this point in time the DH are not able to force UK businesses to use it to the exclusion of other schemes and it is sufficient for any front of pack nutrition to simply comply with the requirements of FIC. There is, however, a good consumer argument to be made for a common scheme being adopted.”
“What if a product has no added salt but has sodium naturally, this seems a bit odd you would have to declare salt on the nutritional information?” Derek Keaveney, quality manager at Calder Millerfield
Spice: “The FIC regulation does take this issue into account to some extent. The last paragraph of article 30(1) allows for a statement to be made indicating that the salt content is exclusively due to the presence of naturally occurring sodium so long as it is in close proximity to the nutrition declaration.”