Food and Health E-ssentials

US FDA Issues Final Guidance on Nutrition Facts Labelling Regulations

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a final guidance to help manufacturers of packaged foods meet the requirements of the agency’s updated Nutrition Facts labelling regulations.

Published in the Federal Register in late December, the final guidance replaces a draft guidance issued in November 2018, and addresses serving sizes of foods, including single-service foods and other foods that can reasonably be consumed in one sitting and which require dual-column labelling. 

Specifically, the final guidance answers questions on:

1. the definition of a single serving container;
2. reference amounts customarily consumed; and
3. dual-column labelling, and formatting issues for products with limited space for nutrition labelling.

The guidance also addresses a number of other issues, such as requirements related to the labelling of chewing gum and multi-unit retail food packages.

Compliance with the revised Nutrition Facts labelling regulation is required as of 1 January 2020 for manufacturers with $10 million or more in annual food sales, with an effective date of 1 January 2021 for manufacturers with less than $10 million in sales. However, the FDA says that it will not focus on enforcement actions during the first half of 2020 but will instead work cooperatively with manufacturers to meet the new requirements. 

The complete text of the FDA’s final guidance as published in the Federal Register is available here.