For those businesses involved with Pre-Packed Direct for Sale (PPDS) food items, Natasha’s law is less than 6 steps way. If you don’t currently have a labelling solution or use a manual process to label your products, it may seem daunting and potentially costly having to comply with these new legal requirements. To help you start the process and with the advice of the UK Food Labelling Resource, we’ve identified 6 keys steps to guide you and ensure your business is ready and compliant with the new legislation.
Step 1
What is the scope of the project?
As a first step it is important to complete a full audit of all food stocks, ingredients and suppliers, to understand the scale of the requirements. Look at the information you are receiving and in what formats.
Step 2
Do I need to automate?
If your labelling processes are currently manual, ensuring that you accurately label your products with the correct highlighted allergens is a challenge. A low-cost, off the shelf, desktop barcoding labelling solution, will allow you to streamline your business and ensure that you are fully compliant with the legal requirements. Easy to integrate, removing the potential risk of human error and providing you with essential peace of mind.
Step 3
Inform and educate.
Whatever your size of business, all staff need to be aware and involved in the requirements of Natasha’s Law. This is important at every step of the process; from dealing with suppliers and ordering ingredients; to printing, labelling and packing the food items; to serving and assisting customers.
Step 4
Give it a try.
This could be particularly important if you have multiple sites. A good idea would be to use one site as a trial and make sure that with your new solution, procedures and all aspects of the supply chain are compliant with Natasha’s Law.
Step 5
Check and enhance.
There is still time to refine your processes and make any necessary changes to ensure that your PPDS labels are legible, clear with the full list of ingredients, and most importantly the allergens are highlighted as per the requirements of the legislation.
Step 6
Ready to go!
If you have successfully navigated the steps you should be good to go. But it is important to have regular ongoing reviews to make sure all the key elements, suppliers, stock, labelling solution and staff, are not just compliant on the 1 October 2021, but also into the future.
Make sure you are ready for 1 October 2021, as failing to comply could lead to hefty fines or even prosecution. If you need some help contact our team of experts who can recommend a solution that will work for your business.
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