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Food Law

Food Labelling

See also: Food Labelling in the UK: A Guide to the Regulations

On this page:

Also on this site: UK Food Labelling: Historical Development of Legal Controls (1943-1996)

Summary

Agreed EU-wide controls on food labelling were introduced with Directive 79/112 in 1979. Additional controls were added and amendments introduced to produce a complex array of labelling requirements. In 2000, the original 1979 Directive and its amendments were consolidated into a single new Directive - Directive 2000/13/EC. Additional Directives relating to labelling continued to be adopted. This situation was complex - for details, see the Food Labelling Archive Page on this site.

In January 2008 the Commission published proposals for new controls under the new name: “provision of food information to consumers”. After detailed consideration (see the Food Labelling Archive Page), Regulation 1169/2011 was adopted. This provides a consolidated structure to the legislation and includes, for the first time, the controls on nutrition labelling (previously covered Directive 90/496). Many elements have remained the same but there have been some additional and amended requirements. Implementation was mostly from 13 December 2014 although compulsory nutrition labelling was only applicable from 13 December 2016.

Note: Although Regulation 1169/2011 has consolidated many aspects of food labelling, requirements relating to other aspects can still be found in other EU legal documents and these are not currently listed here. In particular there are separate controls on nutrition and health claims and on foods containing genetically modified ingredients. For details see separate pages on this site:

Additional information can also be found on the European Commission's pages:

EU Legislation and Guidance

The labelling regulation (or more correctly now - “food information” regulation) was adopted on 29 September 2011 and published in the Official Journal on 22 November 2011. It mostly applied from 13 December 2014 (see Article 55 of the Regulation) with the exception of the new mandatory nutrition labelling requirement which became effective from 13 December 2016. There were a few additional transitional provisions - see Article 54 for details.

Consolidated Document

For a consolidated version of the original regulation but incorporating the amendments to the text, see: Regulation 1169/2011 (published January 2018)

Implementing Measures

Regulation 1169/2011 provides the Commission with authority to issue implementing regulations (following specified procedures). The following have been issued:

Guidance Documents

The Commission has published the following guidance documents:

Also available is other guidance:

UK Legislation and Guidance

Brexit: Prior to the IP Completion Day (31 December 2020), the legal requirements given in the EU Regulations listed above still applied to the UK. Since IP Completion Day, the EU Regulations above have been incorporated into UK legislation but with amendments to correct deficiencies. Information on this is given below. For more details of the process of incorporating EU legislation into UK law, see the separate page: UK Food Law: EU Legislation as Amended for the UK. Provisions for the enforcement of the controls (originally the EU Regulations but now as amended) have been provided in the UK Regulations listed below. For Northern Ireland, EU rules still apply.

EU Legislation with links to legislation.gov.uk: as amended for application in the UK:

Enforcement

Providing implementation and enforcement of the labelling rules takes place separately for the four parts of the United Kingdom:

Guidance Documents

Guidance has been developed and the following are available:

Front of Pack Nutrition Labelling This is permitted under EU Regulation 1169/2011 where member states, under certain criteria, are authorised to recommend “additional forms of expression or presentation of the nutrition declaration” (see Article 35). The Department of Health (in association with the devolved administrations) has recommended a UK wide scheme:

This page was first provided on 30 October 2001