Last minute rush as food businesses turn to Nutritics to meet new allergy labelling law

Nutritics, a leading provider of food labelling solutions in the UK has confirmed a huge uptake in their automated labelling solution in the run up to the deadline for Natasha’s Law, which comes into force on the 1st of October.

From that date, food that is made and packaged on site such as sandwiches, salads and wraps, must have a label with ingredient and allergen information included or they cannot legally be sold.

While thousands of larger organisations have been preparing for some time, there is certainly signs of a last minute rush, with the highest ever daily number of visitors to Natashas-Law.com website since it went live in 2019.

Stephen Nolan, Managing Director of Nutritics, says: “We’re seeing about a thousand businesses a day visit our free information hub, the highest ever. We’ve seen demand for our free trial increase in line with that surge. The challenge will be around staff allergy training and supplier onboarding as those businesses work hard to meet the deadline, however we are working closely with all our customers to ensure they get up and running as quickly as possible.”

Nutritics, whose software is relied upon by many of the UK’s largest food service operators including Starbucks, the NHS and Aramark, founded the UK Food Labelling Initiative in 2019 to help all businesses prepare. Partners of the initiative include Allergy UK, the Quadram Institute, The Caterer, EuroFIR and Manchester Metropolitan University.

Over the past two years, the initiative has run a series of free high-profile events, including a three-day conference, weekly webinars, lectures and workshops across all aspects of the food sector. Despite a recent report that stated eight out of 10 food business owners felt “unprepared” for the new food regulations, Nutritics has confirmed that many of the UK’s largest operators have in fact been preparing since prior to the pandemic.

Nolan said “While it’s true that a number of food businesses might only now be getting ready, the majority of larger businesses, caterers and multi-site operators have been putting the necessary changes in place for some time. Since 2019 we have helped thousands of businesses, hospitals, schools and caterers to put automated, end-to-end labelling processes in place. Our system pulls live data from more than 10,000 suppliers, and is built on the largest and most accurate nutritional database in the world.”

For those that are still getting ready, there is a wealth of information out including from the FSA, the UK Food Labelling Resource site and the Nutritics website.

Photo: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock