Navigating Food Safety and Labelling Regulations in Australia

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Table of Contents

• Allergen Labelling
• Health-Related Statements
• Religious Food Certification
• Ingredients and Nutrition
• Key Takeaways

As a food product producer, you should be aware of several requirements about food labelling before packaging and selling your products. Food safety and labelling regulations in Australia aim to protect your customers from encountering food safety issues. They also educate customers about how you make products or what they contain. Correctly labelling your food products will prevent you from making costly mistakes in your packaging and ensure that your customers know that your products are safe and contain high-quality ingredients. This article will unpack food safety and labelling regulations in Australia. 

Allergen Labelling

In Australia, you must declare common allergens in your food product. Common allergens include peanuts, crustaceans, milk and other similar allergens.

If your food product contains a common allergen, you must make sure that you:

• declare the allergen in the ingredient list on your product’s packaging; and
• include a notice on your product’s packaging stating that your product contains the allergen in bold text. An example would be including a text box saying “Contains Peanuts” on the back of a Snickers chocolate bar.

You can also include information about allergens that may have come into contact with your product during manufacturing. For instance, your company might make two kinds of ice cream using the same machine. If one ice cream contains pistachios, you should include a notice stating “May contain pistachios” somewhere on your packaging.

Health-Related Statements

You can include a statement on your product’s packaging that notes its health benefits. What kind of statements you can legally make will depend on the health benefits you claim. 

There are several ways to ensure your health claims are lawful, depending on how unique your claim is. In particular:

• Many pre-approved health-food relationships may fit the relationship between your food product and health. If this is the case for your product, you can make the claim on your packaging.
• Your food product may have health benefits that do not correspond to any of the pre-approved relationships. In this case, you can submit your health-food relationship to Food Standards Australia New Zealand for systematic review.
• If you claim that your food can reduce the risk of serious disease, you can only do so if your claim fits with the pre-approved list of high-level claims.

For more detailed assistance on what claims you can make about your food product and its health benefits, LegalVision’s experienced regulatory lawyers can assist you.

Religious Food Certification

If you produce your food product for a religious demographic with specific dietary needs, you might wish to include labelling that expresses that. The law does not regulate how religious food certification operates. Instead, religious organisations such as Kosher Australia or Halal Australia provide their own processes for accreditation and use of applicable certification marks.

Note that advertising your food product as Kosher or Halal when you do not meet the relevant certification requirements is likely to mislead or deceive consumers. This would amount to a breach of the Australian Consumer Law. 

Ingredients and Nutrition

Ingredients

Your food product must include a list of ingredients on its packaging. An exception is if you sell a single-ingredient product, such as an apple. 

Other key considerations include the following:

• You must list ingredients by weight in descending order.
• If the product includes more than 5% added water, you must list water as an ingredient.
• Sometimes, an ingredient you use consists of other ingredients, such as pasta sauce. If this compound ingredient makes up more than 5% of the product, you must list each of its constituent ingredients.
• If your product is named after some of its key ingredients, you will need to include the percentage of the product that is made up of those ingredients. For example, the ingredient list for a pepperoni pizza might need to state “Pepperoni (10%)”. This is unnecessary for products like bread, which do not have any ingredients that characterise the product.

Nutrition

Packaged food must include a nutrition label. A nutrition label includes the food product’s kilojoule content and how much of certain nutrients it contains. These nutrients include:

• protein; 
• carbohydrates; 
• fats; 
• saturated fats; 
• sugar; and 
• sodium. 

If you advertise your product as having a specific amount of some other nutrient, you must also include how much of that nutrient is present in the nutrition label. For example, a “high fibre” product must state how many grams of fibre are present.

Unpackaged foods do not need a nutrition label. Products such as tea bags also do not need a nutrition label as they have almost no present nutrients. However, if your unpackaged food or no-nutrient product is advertised as having low or high amounts of some nutrients, you must include a nutrition label.

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Key Takeaways

Understanding your safety and labelling responsibilities as a food producer is critical. Your packaging must include a list of common allergens in your product, as well as an ingredient list and nutrition label. If you want to make health-related claims about your product, these must be accurate and clear. Further, you might market your product as suitable for consumption by members of particular religious groups. In this case, you must obtain the relevant certification of suitability for consumption.

If you need help with your safety and labelling requirements, our experienced regulatory and compliance lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 1300 544 755 or visit our membership page.