21 Sep Strategies for Food Allergen Labelling
Keeping customers safe by warning them of the potential food allergens in your products is of vital importance. It ensures that consumers can safely enjoy your product whilst also developing trust in your brand. All of us have a moral obligation to highlight any allergens inside food products. Cases, where food companies have failed to do so, have made the national press many times. Not only is this really bad PR, but in some cases, there have been tragic consequences to these errors.
Labels are the perfect solution to solving these problems and can also be customised to suit a wide range of applications. Here are some tips and strategies for your food allergy labelling.
Display Your Key Features Proudly
If you have a product that meets specific dietary requirements, make sure that you shout about it! There’s often less choice for consumers who need certain food items, such as those who are gluten free or dairy free. Using promotional stickers on the front of packaging will make sure your product gets noticed and make it much easier for the consumer who can finally take a quick glance at a line of products and see which ones are for them!
You could even gain the interest of customers who are interested in trying something new, like vegan or vegetarian varieties of popular foods. The Vegan Society state that demand for meat-free food increased by 987% in 2017 so there is clearly a huge market for this.
Highlight Allergens with Stickers
The UK government launched an investigation in January 2019 into the labelling of allergens in food that is freshly prepared in takeaway shops and cafes. Currently, these food products are not required by law to be labelled with allergens, but a number of deaths from allergic reactions in recent years have seen calls for change. Using allergen labels is a great way to help your customers stay safe, and basic pre-printed stickers are cost effective and easy to use.
Make Sure your Ingredient Text is Legible
It’s necessary, and required by law, for a text that relates to ingredients, allergens and other particular marks (like those used for products of animal origin) to be legible and of a certain size. The guidance from the UK government says that the minimum ‘x-height’ has to be 1.2mm, or 0.9mm for small packages. The information should all be on the same side of the packaging. This can sometimes be challenging when there are a lot of ingredients in a product, but there are a number of fonts available that have a large x-height compared to the overall size. Our design team at RGS Labels can help you and make adjustments to meet your needs.
Using stickers and labels is a quick, easy and cost-effective solution to ensuring your labelling is suitable and has adequate allergy warnings. Do get in touch with our team to talk about your labelling requirements.