Health Canada has made changes to food product labelling to help Canadians make healthy and informed choices about the foods they purchase and consume by increasing visibility to ingredients and nutritional information.
Food manufacturers or distributors are responsible for ensuring all products sold in Canada adhere to these legislative and regulatory requirements. This may require organizations to reformulate products and/or make label changes and updates to product packaging.
Visit Health Canada's website to learn more about the Supplemented Foods Regulations Opens in a new window.
Ensure Trading Partners Have Access to Your Updated, Compliant Nutritional Information
Follow these steps to ensure our product registry reflects your most up-to-date product information and labels. Doing so will give your trading partners confidence in the accuracy of your product content:
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If you have reformulated your product or adjusted the size of your packaging, you may need a new Global Trade Item Number (GTIN). Click here for our GTIN Management Support Tool (opens in a new window) if your product requires a new GTIN.
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Once your product packaging has been updated to align with the Health Canada requirements, schedule your updated product(s) for image and data capture through the Content Capture Service Request.
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Once your product imaging is complete, you will be requested to archive the older version of your product content and certify your updated nutritional content.
Please note that your retailers will not be able to access your updated product information until it has been certified.
FAQs
1. When do the new food labelling regulations go into effect? How can I learn more?
Health Canada has announced several labelling changes with different effective dates. For more information about the regulations, click here (opens in a new window).
2. What is the purpose of the new food labelling regulations?
Health Canada’s healthy eating strategy aims to make it easier for consumers to make healthier, more informed food choices by providing more visibility to product ingredients and nutrition facts on pack. Standardized food labels and changes like the front-of-pack nutritional symbol on packaged foods make it easier for Canadians to identify the right foods for them.
3. How is GS1 Canada supporting my business?
ECCnet Registry was created by Canadian industry to meet business needs for a national product registry providing access to a single source of trusted data. GS1 Canada regularly reviews Health Canada’s regulatory changes, and with industry direction, ensures that data requirements align with trading partner and regulatory requirements through ongoing system updates.
4. Has anything changed in how I upload or update my product content?
No. You can continue to update and certify your product data as you normally would.
5. If my food product label needs to be changed, what should I do?
Review the regulatory food labelling requirements (opens in a new window) to assess changes required on product labels, and then follow these steps:
- Update product packaging and nutrition label in alignment with Health Canada guidelines.
- If you have reformulated your product or adjusted the size of your packaging, you may need a new Global Trade Item Number (GTIN). Click here (opens in a new window) for our GTIN Management Support Tool.
- For retail products:
- Submit products to GS1 Canada Content Capture services to capture new product label information and images.
- Once updated eCommerce and nutritional content has been loaded to Product Certification Specify Food Label Version = 2017.
- Review and certify updated eCommerce and nutritional content.
- Please note that your retailers will not be able to access your updated product information until it has been certified.
- For your food products, please ensure the nutritional data in ECCnet Registry (via ProSYNC, EDI or GDSN) matches the new label.
If you require assistance, please email eccnetsupport@gs1ca.org.