Canadian Food Labelling Requirements

What the law requires on every food label, and where companies consistently get it wrong.

Every food label sold in Canada is a legal document. It must satisfy requirements drawn from two overlapping federal regimes, and the consequences of getting it wrong range from a voluntary correction to a Class I recall. The compliance question is not just "is this label accurate?" It is "does it contain everything the law requires, in the required form, in both official languages, with the mandatory elements in the right places?"

This page covers the mandatory labelling requirements for prepackaged foods sold in Canada. Advertising claims and health claims are addressed separately.

The Regulatory Framework

Canadian food labelling requirements come from two federal regimes that apply simultaneously.

The Food and Drugs Act (R.S.C. 1985, c. F-27) and the Food and Drug Regulations (C.R.C., c. 870) set out compositional standards for foods, nutrition labelling requirements including the Nutrition Facts table, allergen declaration rules, bilingual presentation requirements, and the rules governing health claims. Health Canada administers this regime.

The Safe Food for Canadians Act (S.C. 2012, c. 24) and the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations (SOR/2018-108) impose additional labelling requirements on licensed food businesses, with bilingual presentation and interpretation provisions at ss. 206-207 and adding net quantity, grade, quality, and other commodity-specific labelling obligations. CFIA administers and enforces this regime.

Both Health Canada and CFIA may identify labelling violations. The Competition Act (R.S.C. 1985, c. C-34) also applies: representations on a food label that are false or misleading in a material respect are reviewable under ss. 52 and 74.01, and the Competition Bureau has jurisdiction to investigate label claims independently of CFIA. Compliance with one regime does not establish compliance with the other. Your label must satisfy both simultaneously. This is what makes Canadian labelling technically demanding, and it is why a label that is fully compliant in the United States or the European Union will often require material modification for Canada.

CFIA’s Food Labelling Tool for Industry is the consolidated reference for how these requirements apply in practice. It replaces the older Guide to Food Labelling and Advertising and is the most useful single resource for label compliance.

The Mandatory Elements

Every prepackaged food label requires: a common name (using the prescribed name where a standard of identity exists), net quantity in metric units, dealer identification, a bilingual ingredient list in descending order by weight, allergen declarations, and a Nutrition Facts table in the prescribed format.

Dealer identification requires the name and principal place of business of the person by or for whom the product was manufactured, processed, produced, or packaged. For imported products, CFIA permits three compliant approaches: naming the foreign manufacturer with country of origin, using an "Imported by" or "Imported for" declaration with a Canadian company, or naming the Canadian company together with the country of origin. The name and principal place of business are not required to appear in both official languages, though the "Imported by/for" declaration is.

All mandatory label information must appear in both English and French (FDR B.01.012). There is no exception for products marketed exclusively in one language market. Quebec's language legislation (Bill 96 and its amendments to the Charter of the French Language) imposes additional requirements on French-language presentation that go beyond the federal bilingual obligation. For products sold in Quebec, the provincial requirements are an independent compliance layer.

Products with a durable life of 90 days or less require a best before date ("best before" / "meilleur avant"). Country of origin is mandatory for several imported commodity categories under CFIA administration, including beef and other meats, dairy, honey, fish, fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, maple products, and processed fruit and vegetable products. For other products, country of origin is optional, though voluntary claims must be accurate.

Allergen Declarations

This is the highest-stakes labelling element. An undeclared allergen is the single most common trigger for a Class I recall in Canada (see Product Recalls: A Practical Guide for the recall process and classification framework).

FDR s. B.01.010.1 requires declaration of priority food allergens and gluten sources. Canada's priority allergens are: peanuts; tree nuts (almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, and walnuts); sesame seeds; wheat and triticale; eggs; milk; mustard; fish; crustaceans; molluscs; soy; and sulphites when present at 10 parts per million or more.

Allergens must be declared either in the ingredient list using the allergen's common name or in a "Contains:" statement immediately after the ingredient list. Check every ingredient, every sub-ingredient, and every supplier specification. Do not rely on marketing descriptions from suppliers.

Front-of-Package Nutrition Symbol

Health Canada now requires a front-of-package nutrition symbol on prepackaged foods where sodium, total sugars, or saturated fat exceed specified thresholds. The threshold varies by product category: 15% of the Daily Value is the general rule, but small-reference-amount foods use a 10% threshold, large main-dish products use 30%, and specific exemptions exist for certain food categories. The symbol must appear on the upper half of the principal display panel (or the right half for landscape-format panels per FDR B.01.355) in both English and French.

Mandatory compliance took effect January 1, 2026, applying uniformly to all manufacturers with no phased schedule based on company size. Products carrying the symbol are restricted from making certain nutrient content claims for the flagged nutrient.

If you have not assessed your product portfolio against the FOP thresholds, that review is overdue. New product development should account for FOP implications at the formulation stage. A formulation decision that pushes a nutrient above threshold triggers the symbol and may limit the claims available to you.

Where Companies Get It Wrong

  • Allergen declaration failures: the direct path to a Class I recall.

  • Missing bilingual fields. Companies with US labels add a French panel but miss individual fields: NFt column headers, storage instructions, directions for use.

  • Quebec language compliance. Federal bilingual requirements and Quebec's Charter of the French Language have different scopes and different enforcement regimes.

  • Dealer identification errors. Identifying only the foreign manufacturer without an "Imported by/for" declaration or without country of origin.

  • Incorrect NFt format. Outdated format, wrong serving size methodology, or omitted mandatory nutrients.

  • Name and standard mismatch. Using a prescribed product name for a product that does not meet the compositional standard.

  • FOP non-compliance. Products manufactured after January 1, 2026 exceeding a threshold without the symbol, or applying the wrong threshold for the product category.

Where Counsel Fits

Most labelling work is compliance review, not dispute resolution. The core deliverable is a label review: the draft label reviewed against both federal regimes simultaneously, with corrected language where the label does not comply. A review before production costs a fraction of what a labelling correction costs after product has shipped, and an order of magnitude less than a recall for an undeclared allergen.

Counsel becomes material beyond routine review when a labelling error has triggered or may trigger a recall; when CFIA has identified a violation and is considering enforcement action; when the product's regulatory classification is uncertain (the line between food, drug, natural health product, and supplemented food determines which labelling regime applies); when a claim is under scrutiny; or when Quebec's language requirements interact with the federal framework in ways that require integrated compliance advice.

Companies entering the Canadian market from the United States or Europe are the most common engagement. The assumption that a compliant US or EU label transfers to Canada is wrong often enough and in consequential enough ways that a pre-entry label review is standard practice. For the full import compliance framework, see Importing Food into Canada.

GSJ&Co. reviews labels for companies ranging from single-product startups to multinationals with hundreds of SKUs entering Canada. Contact info@gsjameson.com or +1 (647) 638-3994.

Primary Authorities

Last updated: March 2026. This page is maintained by GSJ&Co. and updated when there are material changes to Canadian food labelling requirements.