Key takeaways
- The rules come from Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 (the FIC), kept in UK law, and the Food Information Regulations 2014.
- How much you must put on a label depends on whether the food is prepacked, prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) or loose.
- Prepacked food needs the full set: name, ingredients with allergens emphasised, QUID, net quantity, date, storage, business address, origin where required and a nutrition declaration.
- PPDS food needs the name and a full ingredients list with the 14 allergens emphasised. Loose food needs allergen information to be available.
- Minimum print size is an x-height of 1.2 mm (0.9 mm on small packs).
- Local authority Trading Standards and Environmental Health officers enforce the rules.
Which rules apply to you
Food information law in the UK is built on Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers, usually called the FIC, which was retained in UK law after Brexit. The Food Information Regulations 2014 enforce it in England, with parallel regulations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland continues to apply EU food law directly under the Windsor Framework, which matters in a few places noted below.
How much information you must give depends on how the food is presented:
| Category | What it means | What is required |
|---|---|---|
| Prepacked | Packed before sale, away from the point of sale, and not altered without opening the pack. Supermarket products, wholesale lines, food sold online. | The full list of mandatory information below. |
| Prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) | Packed on the same premises it is sold from, before the customer orders it. A sandwich wrapped in the café kitchen, a boxed salad, a bagged loaf. | Name of the food and a full ingredients list with allergens emphasised, on the pack. See the Natasha's Law guide. |
| Non-prepacked (loose) | Not packed, or packed at the customer's request after they have chosen it. Restaurant meals, deli counters, bakery goods bagged at the till. | Allergen information must be available, in writing or verbally with clear signposting. |
Distance selling (websites, apps, phone orders) is treated as prepacked for information purposes: everything except the date mark must be available before the purchase is completed, and everything must be with the food on delivery.
The mandatory information for prepacked food
Article 9 of the FIC lists what a prepacked food label must carry:
- The name of the food
- The list of ingredients
- Allergens, emphasised within the ingredients list
- The quantity of certain ingredients or categories of ingredients (QUID)
- The net quantity
- A use-by date or date of minimum durability (best before)
- Any special storage conditions and/or conditions of use
- The name or business name and address of the responsible food business
- The country of origin or place of provenance, where required
- Instructions for use, where the food would be difficult to use without them
- The actual alcoholic strength, for drinks containing more than 1.2% alcohol by volume
- A nutrition declaration
The name, net quantity and alcohol strength must appear in the same field of vision, meaning they can be read together without turning the pack. The rest of this guide takes each item in turn.
Name of the food
Use the legal name where one exists (for example for chocolate, jam, honey and many meat and fish products). Otherwise use a customary name, or a descriptive name that is clear enough for the customer to know what the food is. A brand name or a fanciful name does not count on its own. The name must also carry certain details where they apply: the physical condition or treatment (powdered, smoked, frozen, defrosted), added water above 5% in meat and fish products, and the words "formed" where pieces have been combined to look like a single cut.
Ingredients list
The list is headed "Ingredients" and names every ingredient in descending order of weight as recorded at the time of use. The main rules:
- Compound ingredients (a sauce, a pastry) can be named with their own ingredients in brackets, or broken out into the main list.
- Additivesare listed by their functional category followed by their name or E-number, for example "preservative (sodium nitrite)" or "emulsifier (E322)".
- Water is listed by weight like any other ingredient, except where it is used to reconstitute a dried ingredient or where it makes up less than 5% of the finished product in certain meat and fish preparations.
- Ingredients making up less than 2% of the finished food may be listed in any order after the others.
- Some foods are exempt from an ingredients list, including fresh fruit and vegetables, carbonated water, cheese, butter, fermented milk and cream with no added ingredients other than those needed to make them, and single-ingredient foods where the name makes the ingredient clear.
Allergens
Any of the 14 allergenspresent in the food must be emphasised in the ingredients list so they stand out from the rest: bold, capitals, italics, underlining or a different colour or background all work. The emphasis goes on the allergen itself, so "wheat flour" is written with wheat in bold, and a compound ingredient keeps its allergens emphasised inside the brackets.
Where there is no ingredients list, allergens are declared with a "Contains" statement. Where there is a list, a separate "Contains" box is not allowed to replace emphasis in the list, although an allergy advice statement pointing customers to the bold ingredients is fine. Precautionary "may contain" wording is voluntary and should be used only where a real risk of cross-contamination exists after you have taken reasonable steps to control it.
QUID and net quantity
QUID(quantitative ingredient declaration) is the percentage of an ingredient, shown next to it in the list or in the name. It is required when the ingredient appears in the name of the food ("chicken pie"), is emphasised by words or pictures, or is essential to characterise the food and distinguish it from similar products. The percentage is calculated on the ingredient as used, with a cooking-loss adjustment for products such as pies and sausages where the finished weight is lower than the ingoing weight.
Net quantity is given in grams or kilograms for solids and millilitres or litres for liquids, in the same field of vision as the name. Foods sold by count or below 5 g or 5 ml are generally exempt. If the food is in a liquid medium that is not usually eaten (brine, oil, syrup), a drained net weight is also needed.
Date marking
| Mark | Used for | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Use by | Highly perishable foods that could be an immediate danger to health after a short period: fresh meat and fish, dairy, chilled ready meals, many sandwiches. | "Use by" plus day and month, and the year where helpful. |
| Best before | Everything else: dried, tinned, frozen and ambient foods. | Day and month for foods keeping up to three months; "best before end" with month and year for longer; year alone beyond 18 months. |
It is an offence to sell food past its use-by date. Selling food past its best-before date is legal provided it is still of acceptable quality. Fresh fruit and vegetables, wine, bakery goods normally eaten within 24 hours, vinegar, salt, sugar and chewing gum are among the foods exempt from date marking.
Business details, origin and instructions
Name and address. The label must carry the name and address of the food business responsible for the information, or of the importer. For food sold in Great Britain that must be a UK address; an EU address alone has not been sufficient since the post-Brexit transition period ended. Northern Ireland follows EU rules, so a UK or EU address is accepted there. The address must be a postal address at which the business can be contacted, not just a website.
Country of origin.Required where leaving it off would mislead the customer about where the food comes from, for example a pack with a Union flag on imported meat. It is also mandatory in its own right for several foods including beef, veal, lamb, pork, goat and poultry meat, fish, honey, olive oil, wine and most fresh fruit and vegetables. Since April 2020, where the origin of the food is given and its primary ingredient comes from somewhere else, the ingredient's origin must be stated too.
Storage and conditions of use.Give any instruction needed to keep the food safe or to use it properly: "keep refrigerated", "once opened consume within 3 days", "not suitable for home freezing".
Instructions for use are needed when the food would be hard to use correctly without them, which in practice means cooking and reheating instructions for anything that must be cooked to be safe.
Alcohol.Drinks over 1.2% ABV must state the actual alcoholic strength as "% vol".
Nutrition declaration
Since December 2016 most prepacked food must carry a nutrition declaration, in a table where space allows, in this fixed order and per 100 g or 100 ml:
- Energy, in both kJ and kcal
- Fat
- of which saturates
- Carbohydrate
- of which sugars
- Protein
- Salt
You may add mono-unsaturates, polyunsaturates, polyols, starch, fibre and listed vitamins and minerals, and you may repeat the figures per portion, provided the number of portions in the pack is stated. Percentages of reference intakes are optional and must be accompanied by the statement "Reference intake of an average adult (8 400 kJ / 2 000 kcal)". Salt is calculated as sodium × 2.5. The free nutrition label maker lays the table out in this format.
The main exemptions (Annex V of the FIC) are:
- Food, including handcrafted food, supplied in small quantities by the producer directly to the final consumer or to local retailers who supply the final consumer
- Unprocessed products with a single ingredient
- Water, salt, herbs, spices, sweeteners, tea, coffee and flavourings
- Alcoholic drinks above 1.2% ABV and chewing gum
- Food in packaging whose largest surface is less than 25 cm²
Font size and presentation
- Minimum size. Mandatory information must be printed with an x-height (the height of a lower-case x) of at least 1.2 mm. Where the largest surface of the pack is under 80 cm², the minimum is 0.9 mm.
- Very small packs. Where the largest surface is under 10 cm², only the name, allergens, net quantity and date mark are required on the pack, with the ingredients list provided by other means.
- Legibility. Information must be in a conspicuous place, easily visible, clearly legible and not hidden or interrupted by other printed matter or pictures.
- Language. Labels must be in English; Welsh may be used alongside it in Wales.
- Lot marking.Under the Food (Lot Marking) Regulations 1996 a batch identifier, prefixed with "L" unless it is clearly distinguishable, must appear on prepacked food. A date mark that includes at least the day and month counts as the lot mark.
What changes for PPDS and loose food
PPDS. Since 1 October 2021, food prepacked for direct sale must be labelled on the pack with the name of the food and a full ingredients list with the 14 allergens emphasised. That is the whole requirement from the food information rules; the nutrition declaration, QUID and the other prepacked particulars are not mandatory, though you may add them. The Natasha's Law guide covers who is caught and how to produce the labels.
Loose food. Allergen information must be available for every item, written or verbal. If it is verbal, there must be a sign telling customers to ask, and staff must be able to give a correct answer. An allergen matrix is the usual way to keep that information accurate across a menu.
For both categories, anything you choose to state voluntarily must still be accurate, and the general rule that food information must not mislead applies in full.
Who enforces it
Labelling and composition rules are enforced by your local authority, usually by Trading Standards, with Environmental Health officers covering food safety and hygiene (in Northern Ireland, by district council environmental health services). The Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland set policy and publish guidance. Enforcement typically starts with advice and improvement notices; persistent or serious breaches can lead to prosecution and fines, and a mislabelled allergen can lead to a product recall. The FSA's packaging and labelling guidance and the government's food labelling and packaging pages are the official starting points.
Producing the label itself is where most errors creep in: an ingredients list typed by hand drifts from the recipe, an allergen is left unbolded, a nutrition figure is copied from an old version. Generating the label from the recipe removes that class of mistake. Recipee's label builder builds the ingredients list in weight order with allergens emphasised and the nutrition declaration calculated per 100 g and per portion, straight from the recipe you cost and produce from.