Sandwich Labelling Ingredients

In this installment of Positive ID Labels safety blog is all about sandwich label ingredients, and how they should be displayed; how sandwich labelling ingredients should be displayed is specified with EU regulations known as EU Food Information to Consumers or EU FIC for short.

Sandwich labelling ingredients should be listed in quantitative order within the product. If a product comprises (by weight) mostly of bread, then the bread should be listed in the ingredients first. This should also have attributed the percentage of the product that is bread.

Subsequent ingredients should then be listed, indicating the percentage composition of the food too.

Positive ID Labels has developed a nutrition calculation software specifically for the European food industry. The software allows you to build recipes from constituent ingredients by weight. It then determines the percentages and lists your ingredients in full QUID order.

Doing this work manually is an extremely challenging task for even the most proficient but the software solution is ideal to address the work.

Another aspect of sandwich labelling ingredients is to ensure that the allergens are listed in the correct manner. There are 14 defined allergens within the regulations found on page 26 – Annex 2 of the EU 1169/2011 regulation.

The regulations make it clear that allergens must be indicated in the sandwich labelling ingredients but does not set one particular method over any other. You may highlight the allergens by font, font weight, letter styling, underlining, colour or highlighting. Our preferred method for use with sandwich labelling systems is to use uppercase text. This is obvious and not subject to variation as a result of low print resolutions associated with direct thermal printers.

A statement to the effect that allergens are highlighted and how they are highlights should also be included. E.g. “Ingredients (Allergens indicated in UPPERCASE): ”

The bracketed statement can be included at the start or the end of the ingredient listing.

Allergens should no longer be highlighted in a separate box as was the case before these regulations started.

For more information or advice, call us on 01332 864895 or fill in the form beow and we will contact you.