Canada Food Labelling Changes,

I would be appreciate if somebody could help me in my following issue.

We are working in our new product label. I found in the Health Canada Website, the following changes in terms of food labelling changes.

https://www.canada.c...ng-changes.html

List of ingredients

The changes to the list of ingredients include:

• using both upper and lower case letters for the ingredients in the list

 I would appreciate if you could guide me does “using both upper and lower case letters for the ingredients in the list” applies to new food labelling changes or not. my confusion is that when I searched in different product labels in the market, none of them has this font, all the ingredients list is in upper case on the labels

"The food industry has a transition period of 5 years to make these changes."

 

Never use what's in the market as a guide for what's legal on your food labels. Many manufacturers either do not know better, are willing to take the risk due to low enforcement, or are transitioning to new formats and haven't made the change yet. Know the law yourself, how it's enforced, and be the expert on site.

The law states:

(3) In a list of ingredients, ingredients shall be shown(b) in lower case letters, except that upper case letters shall be used to show

• (i) the first letter of each ingredient or, in the case of a food additive shown in whole or in part by an acronym, the entire acronym, and
• (ii) the alpha-descriptor that forms a part of the common name for a food additive, vitamin or micro-organism;

 

So the A in "vitamin A" can be capitalized, acronyms can be capitalized (E.g. EDTA), and the first letter of each ingredient can be capitalized.  All Canadian products have until December 2021 to make the transition.

Note: I haven't exported to Canada in a while and someone with more expertise may have additional information. I just read the pertinent sections of the law linked above.

FYI the new labeling requirements have NOT yet been finalized. Your best bet is to go to the CFIA website.....they have a tool you can use to help ensure you've met the requirements. A new round of consumer feedback was just launched 3 weeks ago.

There are two rounds of  labeling changes one which has been published and has a deadline for companies to implement by December 14, 2021 which updates the NFT formats, list of ingredients, sugar labeling and serving sizes. The other which is still being finalized deals with front of package labeling and certain health claims, the intent is the same deadline as the first set of changes.  I have also heard that both dates may be pushed to a 2022 date.  

Keep in mind that if you start making the current changes such as the ones you indicated to the ingredient list you have to apply all of the new label changes that go into effect in 2021.  Many companies are waiting to see what the new front of package changes will be so that they do not have to update labels twice. 

Here is the link to the highlights of the current changes due by December 14, 2021 https://www.canada.c...ng-changes.html

Here is a link to the consultation for the front of package labeling if you want to read up on it. https://www.canada.c...-labelling.html

Hi  According to CFIA  

sugars can include:

• white sugar, beet sugar, raw sugar or brown sugar
• agave syrup, honey, maple syrup, barley malt extract or fancy molasses
• fructose, glucose, glucose-fructose (also known as high fructose corn syrup), maltose, sucrose or dextrose
• fruit juice concentrates and purée concentrates that are added to replace sugars in foods

In the following example, there's more:

• fancy molasses by weight than brown sugar or sugar
• sugars in the food by weight than any other ingredient

Figure 8. List of ingredients: sugars.

my question is  vegetable juice concentrate like beet juice, carrot juice considered to be part of sugar? I am a bit confused on it . Please Guide