Hobart released a white paper that details what grocers must do to comply with federal meat-labeling law, which requires nutrition information for popular cuts of raw meat and poultry. The paper, "New Mandatory Meat-Case Nutrition Labeling Rule," is available for free download on Hobart's website. Progressive Grocer
You can go to the USDA website as well. It actually provides free downloads on nutritional charts. The USDA site has ALL of the government guidelines, regulations, provisions, etc. These are what USDA inspectors refer to for compliance. Here's the site: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/regulations_&_policies/Nutrition_Labeling/index.asp
Are we still allowed to put our fat contents or percentages on the packages? I read threw the email but was a little confused. We are using nutrition fact labels on all ground beef. But this doesn't take effect until March 4, 2012. Am I correct on this? The charts are actually pretty simple to print off and our actually quite neat.
You can label each package if it's in your companies capacity to do so, but it's not necessary to label each package should your establishment not have it in their capacity. Where I manage we interpreted the regulations such that providing the USDA charts in poster form was sufficient. The actual regulation allows this in the provisions, specifically paragraph (c). The fact the USDA provides nutritional charts allowing the nutritional information to be downloaded and applied in poster form only reinforces the provision. That's what we chose to do within my organization.
Title 9 - Animals and Animal ProductsVolume: 2 Date: 2011-01-01 Original Date: 2011-01-01 Title: Section 317.302 - Location of nutrition information. Context: Title 9 - Animals and Animal Products. CHAPTER III - FOOD SAFETY AND INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. SUBCHAPTER A - AGENCY ORGANIZATION AND TERMINOLOGY; MANDATORY MEAT AND POULTRY PRODUCTS INSPECTION AND VOLUNTARY INSPECTION AND CERTIFICATION. PART 317 - LABELING, MARKING DEVICES, AND CONTAINERS. Subpart B - Nutrition Labeling. § 317.302 Location of nutrition information. (a) Nutrition information on a label of a packaged meat or meat food product shall appear on the label's principal display panel or on the information panel, except as provided in paragraphs (b) and (c) of this section.
(b) Nutrition information for gift packs may be shown at a location other than on the product label, provided that the labels for these products bear no nutrition claim. In lieu of on the product label, nutrition information may be provided by alternate means such as product label inserts.
(c) Meat or meat food products in packages that have a total surface area available to bear labeling greater than 40 square inches but whose principal display panel and information panel do not provide sufficient space to accommodate all required information may use any alternate panel that can be readily seen by consumers for the nutrition information. In determining the sufficiency of available space for the nutrition information, the space needed for vignettes, designs, and other nonmandatory label information on the principal display panel may be considered. [58 FR 664, Jan. 6, 1993, as amended at 59 FR 40213, Aug. 8, 1994; 60 FR 176, Jan. 3, 1995] the USDA link with info and the actual Code of Regulation.
AAMP has also created nutritional brochures free of charge for their members. I sat in on a webinar last fall and they attempted to discuss this. It was absolutly terrible! FSIS sponsored it, couldnt get the web portion to work, so we all sat there on our telephones as the poor gal read the reg to us. I hung up in the middle of it, called AAMP, got my questions answered and got back to work. We were ready for the original deadline of Jan 1, but I guess the larger chains were not, thus the delay
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I'm not a vegetarian, but have eaten many animals that were.