Glyn Fogell - Consulting on food labelling and bar coding

18/07/2026

More education needed, or just carelessness?

I was shopping in Checkers Sea Point today and my wife (who is wheat-intolerant) pointed out the display stand in the picture. It was packed with a broad range of Simple Truth products and a bold sign on the side that said "GLUTEN FREE", which is why she spotted it.

The second shelf down had boxes of Crushed Wholewheat Flakes which are *NOT* gluten free.

I found a member of the management team and pointed this out to him, showing him the ingredient list on the pack that showed gluten as an allergen. To his credit, he removed the items from the stand and I helped him find other Simple Truth gluten-free products to fill the empty shelf.

I wonder how many other stores have the same problem?

I might have retired from the Shoprite group 16 years ago, but I still care. Weird?

10/07/2026

When is chocolate not chocolate?
The answer is when it is a confection. To be officially considered chocolate, a product must be made from roasted and ground cacao beans, yielding "chocolate liquor" (a mix of cocoa solids and cocoa butter). By standard legal definitions, true chocolate must contain specific minimum percentages of this cocoa-derived matter and real cocoa butter.
Labels need to be read carefully, and retailers mustn't falsely or misleadingly advertise anything. A shelf edge label counts as an advertisement or customer information. S41 of the Consumer Protection Act refers. Have a look at the Nestle Milky Bar and then the shelf edge label description. How often do you compare the two?

01/07/2026

Very wrong!
I was picking up a few things at the Checkers Neighbourhood store in Linksfield last night and, while standing at the Bakery counter, a young boy brought a box of Mint Truffles to the counter and asked what the ingredients were (see photo). This confused the assistant, but she pointed at the label and said, "It says it there". Well, yes, it had a heading for Ingredients, but there were no ingredients. It did say available on request; he was requesting and not getting the information. Hmm. And then the boy's father came along.

There followed an interesting discussion as the label said that the product was produced in "this bakery", so why didn't they have an ingredient file? and then a manager joined the discussion. She explained that the product was made in an off-site "dark" bakery and brought to the store.

R146/2010 puts the onus on the retailer to have full ingredient and allergen information available to consumers for anything produced within the store. As these are produced off-site, packaged, and then brought to the store, they fit the definition of a prepackaged food product in R146:
"prepackaged" means the packaging of a foodstuff in packaging material ready for sale to the consumer or to a catering establishment, so that such foodstuff cannot be altered without opening or changing the packaging but does not include individually wrapped one-bite sugar confectionery or chocolate confectionery which is not enclosed in any further packaging material and is not intended for sale as individual items, and does not include the outer containers of bulk stock;

I checked the GTIN (number in the bar code) with the GS1 South Africa database and it belongs to MJ Bakeries T/A Fresh Bake who are based in Welkom, so apparently not a "dark" Checkers in-house bakery; Shoprite Group GTINs start with 6001001 or 6001224 in the main.

So, Checkers, what's the story? You can do better than this. Ingredients on the label please.

28/06/2026

The R3337 saga continues
Further industry discussions and debates have identified more areas of the proposed new food labelling regulations that are unclear, contradictory, virtually impossible to comply with, or have just not been thought through carefully enough.

The advantage of the consultative approach where proposed laws or Regulations are published for public (and industry comment) is that there is time to give the Regulators an opportunity to get industry input and understand the practical implications of their "good ideas".

While consumer protection and helping the consumer make informed decisions about what they eat is very important, it has to be workable in real life for the producers of these food products without adding massive overheads, some of which could potentially put smaller producers out of business.

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06/06/2026

Draft replacement food labelling Regulations
Three years ago, the DoH released a series of drafts to replace the current R146/2010 and a number of related Regulations to roll the various Regulations for certain types of foods and additives into a single comprehensive set of Regulations. They took three attempts because of serious errors in the first two, and the final draft was R3337/2023.

And then it all went quiet after the review period. We were expecting them to quietly slip it into the Gazette around one or other Christmas as they have in the past, but luckily they didn't.

Talks have been held about the draft Regulations recently with DoH by the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) and interested parties. Many points were raised about how unworkable the draft Regulations were because of the resultant lack of space for anything else on the pack other than the mandatory information. While FOP nutrient labelling is great for the consumer, there has to be a balance with actually being able to package and sell the product. Nutri tables would be mandatory as well, but try putting one on a very small package in letters of the minimum permitted size, and an ingredient list, and storage instructions, and....and....

There's been a second round of discussions, and we're just waiting to see what comes out of those. In the meantime, the existing Regulations are in force.

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