Nutrition labelling – will you beat the FIR phase 2 deadline?
Compliance. Don’t you just love it? Thought so. In which case, you’ll know that phase two of the Food Information Regulations comes into effect on December 13.
Cue piles of paperwork, loads of cross-referencing and many extra hours of hard grind, especially for owner-operators and QA/technical managers. But it doesn’t have to be this way. If you want to cut the time you spend on FIR and make sure all your data is correct, check out Infood, our all-in-one food information application.
Infood generates the nutritional information required by FIR phase two as well as the accurate allergen data required by phase one. All mandatory energy (kilojoule/kilocalorie) and quantity (fat, sugar, salt etc.) declarations as well as voluntary declarations are built in.
It’s a cloud-based solution, so there’s no specialised hardware or installation needed. You can access Infood on any web-connected device (tablet, PC, mobile). Infood works with just about any label printer and integrates with pretty much all brands of labelling software.
Easy to use, Infood includes libraries with over 6000 ingredients and products from suppliers for rapid recipe calculation. And, as an added bonus for those wishing for more leisure time, Infood also generates product specification documents.
What’s more, if you have a wholesale operation, Infood provides a nifty way to communicate all your food information to your customers online. Having generated the data you need, Infood publishes it to a secure web portal. You give your wholesale customers a password to the portal (which comes as part of the application) and they can access the data whenever and wherever they want.
Are You Ready?
While the last set of FIR rules dealt mostly with labelling and the signposting of 14 allergens, phase two of the legislation covers nutrition information.
If you sell pre-packaged food, there are strict rules on what energy and nutrition information must be shown on either the front or back of pack. If you sell loose food, then bear in mind that if you are making any voluntary claims about a product, then you pretty much have to follow the rules for pre-packed food anyway.
If you’d like to gain confidence in your compliance – and save days of time-consuming work with spreadsheets or outmoded nutritional systems – give us a call today on 01904 622888 or drop us a line at info@cybake.co.uk.
Infood comes in four packages to suit the size/nature of your operation and we can have you set up to beat the FIR phase two deadline in no time.
Jane Tyler is the managing director of Cybake and was the bakery software’s original creator. She is a regular speaker at food and technology conferences and is also known for championing the cause of food waste reduction.
