Quebec wants to alter data on meat product labels
By Canadian Packaging staff
Food Safety Coding & Labeling best-before date information Food labeling in Quebec Food safety in Quebec Quebec Agriculture Minister Pierre ParadisProposed change to mandate best-before-date ON labels for meat packaging.
While food safety in Quebec only needs to be close enough, a proposed changed to the labeling of meat products sold in the Province will mandate that the best-before data and packaged date now appear on the package.
At this time in Quebec, best-before data for meat products only has to be posted near the products in the store. The Packaged date is already included on the labeling.
The Quebec government is proposing a requirement that both best-before and packaging dates be indicated on the labels of all products having a shelflife of 90 days or less.
The proposal says that violators could receive a fine of CDN $500 to $3,000 for a fist time offense, and going up to $1,500 to $9,000 for further violations.
The public has 45 days to comment on the proposed regulation, which means the the legislation could only come into effect in Quebec as early as mid-August 2016.
Quebec Agriculture Minister Pierre Paradis noted in a press release that this decision was swayed by the fact some grocery store had previously tampered with packaging dates on meats and poultry in 2014 in an effort to deceive consumers that the products were fresher than they actually were.
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