Effective Date for Meat Nutrition Labeling Delayed

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety (USDA) and Inspection Service (FSIS) have recently announced that the effective date for the mandatory nutrition labeling requirements for single-ingredient and ground/chopped meat and poultry products in the USA has been delayed until March 1, 2012.  The previous effective date was January 1, 2012. 

The delayed effective date allows retailers more time to prepare for the upcoming legislation.  ADC has been following this legislation closely since it was announced in December 2010.  At that time, the FSIS mandated that the 40 most popular cuts of meat must have nutritional labeling on the pack or at the point of purchase. Additionally, single-ingredient ground meat must have the meat nutritional facts on the package.¹

The nutrition facts panels are expected to include the number of calories and the grams of total fat and saturated fat a product contains.  Additionally, any product that lists a lean percentage statement, such as "76%" lean on its label, will also list its fat percentage, which is intended to make it easier for consumers to understand the amounts of lean protein and fat in their purchase.

Looking for a Solution?  ADC's InterStore.Net Fresh Item Management (FIM) suite of software provides readily available solutions to supermarket chains for the upcoming meat nutritional labeling requirements.

InterScale, ADC's brand-neutral scales management system, hosts nutrifacts to the barcode labeling scales in meat departments, regardless of manufacturer, from one centralized H.Q. system. InterScale supports different nutrifacts by vendor/supplier for the same item/PLU across stores. Nutrifacts information must be presented on labels in a rigorous and standardized format. InterScale now hosts these label formats to scales and printers from the major manufacturers, allowing the retailer large savings by avoiding expensive hands-on service calls by the scale provider.

NutriGen, ADC's Recipe Management software, calculates nutritional labeling information from a recipe's sub-recipes and raw ingredients, allowing InterScale to send this data to the in-store barcode labeling scales and label printers.

"ADC is continually working with our clients and the scale manufacturers to provide a solution that will exceed the mandate set forth by the FSIS for meat nutritional labeling," said Steve Loveridge, President of ADC. "Currently, we have some clients who are ahead of the legislation deadline by already hosting nutrifacts to their barcode labeling scales and providing this information on meat packages. We hope to see this number increase as the sunrise date approaches."

 

¹http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/RDAD/FRPubs/2005-0018F.pdf