If you sell food in Australia, the new country of origin labelling law may apply to your products.
The law applies to food offered for retail sale in Australia, including in stores or markets, online or from a vending machine. The law does not apply to food sold in places like restaurants, cafes, take-away shops, schools, or to food provided by caterers.
Businesses will have time to adjust over a two-year transition period, this means food products packaged up until 1 July 2018 can be sold without the new labels.
Your business will have two years until the new labels are mandatory but you can start designing your own new labels now, or use the country of origin labelling online tool to generate labels for you.
Visit the country of origin label library on Business.gov.au. You will be able to access information to design your own new labels, including the:
Information standard - sets out the correct label for each food product
Style guide - shows how your label should look and be applied to your product (video format available)
Label parts and orientation - download relevant label parts
Online tool - helps you to determine if you need a label, and if you do, it will then find, customise and download the appropriate label for your food products.
Country of origin label - small, by ACL food labelling
Country of origin labels
The new labels will show a:
triangle kangaroo symbol showing the Australian origin
bar chart and statement showing the percentage of Australian ingredients.
There are a number of recognised logos which indicate where food has been made or grown, for example, growers often have their own 'stickers' identifying their company or region, for example WA citrus fruit.
More information about the logos or symbols is available from: