MEDIA RELEASE

For Immediate Release

Release Date: 19 March 2010

Golden Warning for Business

Yesterday’s announcement that Golden Circle will forfeit $1.8 million worth of stock with misleading labels should trigger all businesses to review their product labels.

Compliance and risk consultant David Bartlett says that all manufacturers, importers, wholesalers and retailers need to ensure they have processes in place to comply with product labelling requirements.

“There is more to labelling products than getting the aesthetics right and making sure the information is factually correct”, said Mr Bartlett, Director of Blue Mercury Consulting.

Many products are required to be made or sold with labels that contain warnings, a list of ingredients and other specific details.

“And it’s not only food that must have labels containing this type of information", said Mr Bartlett.

In some cases labels are regulated to the point where the font size, colour and location of information on the label are specified by legislation.

“In addition to being aware of current product labelling obligations, businesses need to have processes in place to be notified if labelling requirements change”, said Mr Bartlett, who also publishes Queensland Compliance Monthly, a free monthly e-magazine dedicated to informing small business owners about compliance changes.

According to Mr Bartlett manufacturers and importers should also have quality assurance processes in place to ensure each product run meets required standards, including correct labelling.

“Importers in particular need to have processes in place to monitor product quality and ensure their overseas manufacturers reliably deliver products that are correctly labelled”, Mr Bartlett said.

But in many cases it’s the retailer who may be pursued by a regulator if caught selling products without mandatory labelling requirements.

“It’s vital that retailers ensure they are aware of mandatory labelling requirements and regularly check their stock for compliance”, said Mr Bartlett.

Mr Bartlett said business owners also need to think about how they would recall an item from sale if it was later found to not meet mandatory labelling requirements.

“It’s something most business people dread to think about.  But spending an hour now to develop a product recall procedure will be time well spent in the event that you have to recall a product”, said Mr Bartlett.

For more information see www.bluemercuryconsulting.com.au

Enquiries: David Bartlett (Mob: 0431 474 791)