Food Packaging Law
by Analysis of a piece of food packaging, and the laws which govern this.
Daniel Curry
Food Labelling Assignment
All packaged foods are covered by a piece of legislation known as the Food Labelling Regulations 1996. This set of regulations sets out a number of requirements that all packaged food must have on their labelling.
The seven main requirements are:
Name of the Product
Ingredients
Minimum Durability
Storage Conditions
Name and Address of Manufacturer
Origin
Instructions for Use
Looking in depth at one product, I will report as to whether the labelling adheres to the rules set out in the Food Labelling Regulations 1996. The product which I have chosen to report on is a 37g bag ofMars Malteasers.
Name
Firstly, the name of the product. Clearly displayed across the front of the packet is ‘malteasers’ in a custom font from Mars. However, as outlined in the Food Labelling Regulations 1996, a Trademark cannot be used as a legal name for a product in this sense, no matter how popular the product is. The only types of naming allowed are: prescribed names, customary names or a full descriptive name. Prescribed names are names given by law which must be used for the product. For example certain species of fish or certain varieties of vegetables. Customary names are local names for food products which everyone would be expected to know. For example Yorkshire puddings. However, neither of these categories are relevant to this product and so it has to be given a full descriptive name. The name used on this packaging is, “Chocolates with crisp, light honeycombed centres”. It needs to be ascertained whether or not this descriptive name fully and clearly conveys what the product is to the consumer. In this case, we can say that legally it does, as there is no missing information about the product here. The only minor problem which I can see that may cause slight uncertainty to some consumers, is that it does not outline what type of chocolate, be it milk white or dark etc.
Ingredients
The Food Labelling Regulations 1996 says that if a product has more than one ingredient, then all of the ingredients used must be listed in decreasing order of weight at time of addition to the food. Additives are also included in this area and can be written by their full legal name, or as their corresponding ‘E-Number’, plus a general description of their use (flavouring, preservative etc). Any ingredients which themselves have multiple ingredients, are called compound ingredients and any of these compound ingredients form more than 25% of the final product, then their ingredients must also be listed to the same rules.
Liked it
