Natasha’s Law – what you need to know

Natasha’s Law is the name given to a set of regulations regarding food labelling for the food industry. It is named after Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, a young lady who tragically died from an allergic reaction to a baguette containing sesame seeds.

The law was enacted after extensive lobbying by Natasha’s parents, to prevent such an unnecessary death from happening again.

The law came into effect in October 2021. It pertains to pre-packed foods sold on the same premises as it was made.

Natasha’s Law is effectively a widening of the scope of EU Food Information to Consumers (EU FIC) regulations brought in under EU Directive 1169/2011.

That regulation requires that all pre-packed food sold off-site should have full ingredient listing and allergen highlighting on the packaging. There is a prescribed format for the ingredient declaration too called QUID (QUantitative Ingredient Declaration).

Natasha’s Law requires the same labelling as EU FIC, but without the need for nutrition data. This means that all pre-packed food must include a properly formatted ingredient declaration and any of the 14 allergens must be highlighted.

What is a properly formatted ingredient declaration?

The ingredient declaration must include:

  • List of ingredients
  • Allergens highlighted
  • In Quantitative Order (QUID)

Ingredients:

The ingredient declaration must include a full listing of all the constituent ingredients within a product. For example, you cannot just say a sandwich includes bread, mayonnaise and tuna, it must include the ingredients within the bread, the mayonnaise and the tuna.

Allergens:

The allergens within the ingredients must be highlighted and the method of highlighting must be described in the listing. You can use any method of highlighting but Nutridata will convert any allergen into UPPERCASE as this will work with all labelling software.

If uppercase text is the method then a statement at the start of the ingredient listing should read as follows:

Ingredients (Allergens listed in UPPERCASE):

Quantitative Order (QUID):

The law regarding quantitative declaration is somewhat technical. For the sake of this blog post, all that we need to know is that the ingredient listing should be in quantitative order.

How can Nutridata help?

Nutridata has been developed especially to help both businesses affected by EU FIC regulations and the new Natasha’s Law regulations.

If you only sell pre-packed food for sale on the same site as the pre-packed food was made, Nutridata Lite software will cover your needs. This version is ‘cut down’ to process ingredient listing, allergens and QUID.

If you sell pre-packed foods to be sold off-site, then you need to include nutrition data and you will need to use Nutridata Pro. This version offers the same functions as Nutridata Lite but adds nutrition calculations and cost calculations to your products and recipes.

The data handling you need to do to meet Natasha’s Law is all handled within the software. All you need to do is follow the steps to create your products. Those steps are quite simple:

  • Add your pantry ingredients with their constituent components
  • Create recipes from your ingredients, noting by weight how much of each ingredient constitutes the receipe
  • Create a Product from your recipe (basically adding a title, barcode and any other pertinent information such as shelf life, storage instructions or other warnings).

Once you have done that, Nutridata does the rest of the work for you.

  • Nutridata will re-order your ingredients so the largest constituent is first and the smallest is last.
  • It will then determine the percentage for each ingredient in the recipe.
  • It will parse your ingredients and force any of the 14 allergens into upper case.
  • It will write the full ingredient declaration for you to add to your labels.

The software works on a website so is compatible with all operating systems. It works with Windows, Mac, Linux and even on iPhones, iPads and Android phones and tablets.

The data the software produces can be exported for use with your labelling software or system. It exports data as an Excel Spreadsheet from which you can work.

Nutridata works especially well with Label Direct Labelling Software. We offer a range of thermal printers to suit all business sizes from small outlets up to large-scale wholesalers.

You can start a free trial of Nutridata by filling in the form below. The trial version will last for 30 days and is 100% functional with the exception of download function.