AS anyone in the food industry knows The Food Information Regulations (FIR) 2013 , the UK implementation of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers (‘FIC’) come into force before the end of 2014

The rules include:

- mandatory nutrition labelling on pre-packaged food
- more country of origin labelling
- improved date marking (including date of first freezing)
- clarity and legibility of food information
- labelling of non pre-packed foods
- allergen information, including on food sold loose and in restaurants, cafes etc

Under the new rules, all ingredients must be in one location and allergens will be emphasised on the label. Food businesses can choose what method they want to use to emphasise these, for example, by listing them in bold. Full regulations can be found here LINK

What this clearly means is that most food packaging will need to be re-designed and this may mean hundreds or thousands of artwork changes for some companies; the people responsible for package design and QC are going to be very busy!

But help is at hand! Our Proofiler Content and Content Compare will dramatically reduce the time taken to check the changed artwork. Two files can be compared in the background and the results send back to the graphic designer or QC person. Minimum font size is checked, ingredients and allergens can be checked against a Word or Excel table, and crucially we check that nothing else has been unintentionally changed whilst modifying the artwork to comply with the regulations.