Food Labelling, Claims & Marketing

Labels, claims, packaging compliance, and market entry for food products sold in Canada.

Canadian food labelling draws from multiple federal regimes simultaneously. The consequences of getting it wrong range from a voluntary correction to a Class I recall. The stakes vary by error, but the common thread is that labelling and claims problems are preventable, and preventing them before production is always more efficient than fixing them after product has shipped.

GSJ&Co. advises food companies on the full range of labelling, claims, and marketing issues. The work falls primarily into four areas.

Pre-Production Label Review

The best place to catch a label problem is on a pre-print spec sheet. The worst place is after the run is printed and the cases are stocked. Pre-production review checks the artwork against the applicable federal and provincial requirements before printing: statement of identity and net quantity declaration on the principal display panel, list of ingredients and allergen statements, date markings, country of origin where applicable, nutrition facts table format, and the character-height rules that depend on the principal display surface area. Bilingual labelling is required for most food sold in Canada; Quebec's language and packaging rules are stricter. Where the label carries health, nutrition, or environmental claims, the review covers what is substantiable and how it must be expressed. The output is a marked-up spec returned to the designer and packaging team with the changes that have to be made and the rationale for each. See Canadian Food Labelling Requirements for the federal framework, Supplemented Foods in Canada for supplemented food obligations, and Food Health Claims for the claim categorization, substantiation, and food/drug boundary analysis.

Claims and Advertising Risk

Health claims, nutrient content claims, environmental claims, and marketing representations are regulated through the Food and Drugs Act, the SFCR, the Competition Act, and CFIA and Health Canada guidance. The rules differ by claim type, product category, and medium. A claim permissible on a label may not be permissible in advertising. We advise on claim substantiation, the greenwashing provisions, Quebec's distinct requirements, and the evolving rules around digital and influencer marketing for food brands. See Food Advertising and Marketing Law.

Canada Market Entry

For companies bringing products into Canada for the first time, the label review is where the differences between Canadian and foreign requirements become concrete. A label compliant in the United States or the EU will not be compliant in Canada without modifications, and some of those modifications are not obvious. The regulatory analysis for market entry covers labelling, formulation review, ingredient classification, and any product-specific requirements. See Canadian Food Market Entry, and Importing Food into Canada for the licensing and border process.

Packaging and Environmental Compliance

Packaging regulation in Canada is changing quickly. The federal plastics framework under CEPA, the Federal Plastics Registry, single-use plastics prohibitions, provincial extended producer responsibility programmes, and the evolving rules around recycling labelling and environmental claims all create compliance obligations for food companies that did not exist five years ago. These obligations sit at the intersection of packaging law and food law, where compliance with one regime does not satisfy the other. See Plastics and Packaging Regulation.

How We Work

Labelling review is high-volume work for us. We review labels for companies ranging from single-product startups to multinationals with hundreds of SKUs entering Canada. The process is consistent: review against the applicable requirements, flag what needs to change, explain why, provide the corrected language. We work with designers and packaging teams to make sure the regulatory requirements are met without compromising the commercial design.

Last updated: March 2026. This page is maintained by GSJ&Co. and updated when there are material changes to the relevant regulatory framework.