Promoted: Natasha’s Law – the laws are changing

By Rob Henry, QA and Technical Manager and Julian Edwards, Allergen Accreditation

The more we learn about the new laws for Pre-Packed for Direct Sale or PPDS (or Natasha’s Law) – the more it becomes obvious that it’s a big leap for caterers to set this up, get it going and monitor it when it’s in place!

For businesses that serve up food and drink in open containers and vessels directly after the goods being ordered, there are no worries or changes to your allergen management practises.

But for those who prepare and pack sandwiches, wraps, rolls, salad pots, smoothies and the like and have these ready for sale in advance of being ordered; they will need to label these with a full ingredients list with allergens in bold, from the 1 October 2021.

A lot of us will be fresh baking and scratch cooking therefore fillings will be quite easy to list, put in a recipe and ultimately put the same information on a label. Although for a slice of bread, for example, this would have to read ‘Bread: Wheat Flour (with added Calcium, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), i.e. the ingredients on the pack of the flour.

When buying in products – take a look at a loaf of bread and jar of pickle, and immediately you find an awful lot of items to squeeze onto a label! The label itself must have a minimum font size – so people can actually read it and invariably it’s your product and you will want to have your logo on it too and of course a use by date!

When all this is up and running and your regular customers see it in action there will be some murmuring that you have opted to buy in your PPDS – hence the “manufacturer” label!

Could be the case, if space on the label allows, to show: “Made here fresh today!” Just a thought. It will definitely be a case of trying this out and getting familiar with the implications of Natasha’s Law. As an exercise get you and team members to start trialling PPDS – do this with a pad and pen.

Take a selection of normal items that you sell and begin reviewing the ingredients. Start to build up a portfolio of labels that you will use in the future.

One of the most common pitfalls of allergen management is when you get a substitute sauce base, mayonnaise or other ingredient. So, at the very start of your PPDS development get a policy in place that tells everyone when there’s a change of ingredient so that can be corrected on that batch of labels.

And on quality management – just like your general allergen matrix that you update for showing customers who ask, make sure all your finished products and their labels are checked!

For lots of us who still shun, avoid or ignore technology it is probably time to bite the bullet and explore how a computer system can help with not just PPDS but your overall management of allergens. CaterCloud, is the FREE to use, leading menu management solution for allergen, nutrition, menu planning and costing and is your last piece of the puzzle!

But like all computer stuff its garbage in – garbage out, meaning it will only be as good as the information you type into the system.

Realistically we do actually create recipes and ingredients lists for our foods and by now we are all used to this because the allergenic ingredients need to be put on to the allergen matrix for each dish we do. Therefore, we need to up our game and record ingredients, recipe, and method with other useful stuff like HACCP or even nutrients and incorporate this into our daily catering lives.

Like all technology you only want to do this once and of course access it to change any ingredients as and when required. So, if allergen information is linked to your till system, allergen matrix, stores and records and now your labels it does make sense to use one platform that can generate what you need and in the format you need it in. CaterCloud is by far the leader in this!

Download our PPDS document for FREE here.

Make sure you stay Natasha’s Law Compliant and sign up with CaterCloud for free.

CaterCloud, the leading menu management software, is available for FREE and will help with all your allergen needs plus much, much more. For more information and to learn more about allergens etc. visit our Allergy Hub or contact us via email [email protected] or call us on (0)161 441 3443.