FIR 2014 Explained: UK Food Information Regulations for Small Businesses
If you make and sell prepacked food in the UK, the Food Information Regulations 2014 decide what has to appear on your label. They are the rules behind ingredient lists, allergen emphasis, date marking and the nutrition table — and they are the same framework Natasha's Law sits inside. This guide walks through every mandatory particular in plain English so you can label with confidence.
What are the Food Information Regulations 2014?
The Food Information Regulations 2014 — usually shortened to FIR 2014 — are the UK regulations that put the modern food labelling rules into force domestically. The detail of those rules originally came from Europe, in Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers, almost always referred to as the FIC (Food Information to Consumers Regulation). The FIC sets out what information food must carry; FIR 2014 is the piece of UK law that makes it an offence to get it wrong and that hands enforcement powers to the authorities.
It is worth being precise about this two-part structure, because people often talk about "the labelling law" as if it were a single document. In reality there are two layers. The first layer is the substantive rule book — the FIC — which lists the mandatory particulars, defines terms like "prepacked food", and sets out how ingredients and allergens must be presented. The second layer is the domestic enforcement regulation — FIR 2014 (and its equivalents in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) — which says that breaching those rules is a criminal offence, who can prosecute, and what penalties apply. When a food business gets a visit from an environmental health officer about a label, it is FIR 2014 that gives them the teeth.
The regulations apply to virtually all food sold to the final consumer or to mass caterers, whether the food is prepacked, prepacked for direct sale, or sold loose. The exact obligations differ depending on which of those categories your product falls into, which is the single most important thing to get right before you design a label.
Who enforces FIR 2014?
Day-to-day enforcement of food information and labelling rules sits with your local authority. In practice that means the council's environmental health team and, for some composition and labelling matters, trading standards. The officer who inspects your kitchen — your Environmental Health Officer (EHO) — has the power to inspect products, take samples, issue improvement notices, and where necessary refer matters for prosecution. Penalties for serious or persistent breaches can include unlimited fines.
Sitting above local enforcement is the Food Standards Agency (FSA), the body responsible for food safety and food standards across England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Food Standards Scotland performs the equivalent role in Scotland). The FSA does not usually inspect individual small businesses, but it publishes the official guidance that local authorities and businesses rely on to interpret the law. Whenever this article points you to a rule, you should treat the current FSA guidance as your authoritative reference and check it before you finalise a label.
The mandatory particulars for prepacked food
"Prepacked food" means food put into packaging before being offered for sale, in such a way that the contents cannot be altered without opening or changing the packaging — think a wrapped loaf, a jar of chutney, or a boxed ready meal produced for sale through a shop. For prepacked food sold to consumers, FIR 2014 requires a set of mandatory particulars. Below we work through each one. Not every particular applies to every product, but most prepacked foods need the full set, and you should be able to justify any you leave off.
1. The name of the food
Every product must carry a name that describes it accurately and is not misleading. Where there is a legal name (for example for certain meat products or jams), you must use it. Otherwise you use a customary name or a sufficiently descriptive name — "Cheddar cheese and red onion quiche" rather than simply "Quiche". The name must also carry certain qualifiers where relevant, such as "smoked", "powdered", or treatment such as "defrosted" where the food has been frozen and thawed before sale. The point is that a consumer should know what they are buying from the name alone.
2. The list of ingredients
You must provide a full list of ingredients, headed by the word "Ingredients", with everything listed in descending order by weight as recorded at the time the ingredients were used to make the product. Water and volatile ingredients are listed in order of their weight in the finished product, and added water above 5% must usually be declared. Compound ingredients — an ingredient that is itself made of several components, such as a bought-in sauce or pastry — must be broken down so the consumer can see their sub-ingredients. Getting the order right matters: it is one of the most common things an EHO will check, and it is exactly the kind of calculation that software is far better at than memory.
3. Allergens emphasised within the ingredients list
Any of the 14 major allergens that appear in the recipe must be emphasised within the ingredients list — typically in bold, but a different colour, underlining or a contrasting font also satisfies the requirement, as long as the allergen stands out clearly from the surrounding text. The emphasis must be applied to the allergen wherever it appears, including inside compound ingredients. You can read a full breakdown in our guide to the 14 major allergens under UK law. The same allergen-emphasis principle is what drives Natasha's Law for food packed and sold on the same premises, covered in more detail further down.
4. QUID — quantitative ingredient declaration
QUID stands for Quantitative Ingredient Declaration. It requires you to state the percentage of a particular ingredient in certain situations: when the ingredient appears in the name of the food (for example the beef in "beef lasagne"), when it is emphasised on the label in words, pictures or graphics (a picture of strawberries on a yoghurt pot), or when it is essential to characterise the food and to distinguish it from products it could be confused with. The percentage is normally shown beside the ingredient in the list — for example "Beef (28%)". QUID exists so consumers can compare like with like and judge whether a product delivers what its name and packaging promise.
5. Net quantity
Prepacked food must show its net quantity — the weight or volume of the food itself, excluding packaging — using metric units (g, kg, ml, l). For products sold by number, the count may be appropriate instead. Where a product is packed in a liquid (for example olives in brine), you may also need to declare the drained net weight. Net quantity ties into separate weights-and-measures rules enforced by trading standards, so it is one to get exactly right.
6. Date marking — 'use by' vs 'best before'
Food must carry an appropriate date mark, and choosing the correct form is a safety decision, not a stylistic one. A 'use by' date is about safety and is mandatory on highly perishable foods that could become harmful — fresh meat and fish, dairy, many chilled products. It is illegal to sell food after its use-by date, and the food should not be eaten afterwards. A 'best before' date is about quality: the food is at its best until that date and is usually still safe to eat afterwards, though it may have lost flavour, colour or texture. You also need to give any storage instructions that the date depends on (see below).
7. Storage conditions and conditions of use
Where a food needs particular conditions to keep it safe or at its best — "Keep refrigerated", "Store in a cool, dry place", "Once opened, consume within 3 days" — those instructions are mandatory. This is closely linked to date marking: a use-by date is only meaningful alongside the storage conditions it assumes. If your product needs to be chilled, the label must say so, and your date mark must reflect storage at that temperature.
8. Name and address of the food business operator
The label must identify the food business operator (FBO) responsible for the food information — that is, a business name and a UK address at which the business can be contacted. This is the FBO under whose name the food is marketed, or if that business is not established in the UK, the importer. Following Brexit, the address given must be a UK address, which was one of the practical changes for businesses that previously relied on an EU address.
9. Country of origin or place of provenance (where required)
Origin information is mandatory in specific cases — for example for certain meats, honey, olive oil, and most fresh and minimally processed fruit and vegetables — and, more broadly, wherever omitting it would mislead the consumer as to the true origin of the food. If your packaging implies one origin (a flag, a place name, imagery) while the food actually comes from elsewhere, you must declare the real origin. For many small prepacked products origin labelling is not separately required, but the "do not mislead" principle always applies.
10. Instructions for use (where needed)
If a food could not reasonably be used correctly without instructions, those instructions are mandatory — cooking times and temperatures for a raw or part-cooked product, reconstitution instructions for a powder, or assembly steps for a kit. The test is whether a typical consumer could use the product safely and as intended without them.
11. Nutrition declaration
Most prepacked food sold to consumers must carry a mandatory nutrition declaration — the so-called "big 7": energy (in kJ and kcal), fat, of which saturates, carbohydrate, of which sugars, protein, and salt, all expressed per 100g or per 100ml. You may add a per-portion column and certain voluntary nutrients. There are exemptions — including PPDS food and some single-ingredient or unprocessed products — which we cover in our dedicated guide to when UK food labels need a nutrition table.
Mandatory particulars under FIR 2014 at a glance
The table below summarises each mandatory particular, what it requires, and which categories of food it generally applies to. Treat it as a quick reference rather than a substitute for the full FSA guidance, because exemptions and edge cases exist for almost every line.
How FIR relates to Natasha's Law and retained EU law
One of the most common points of confusion is how Natasha's Law fits into all this. The short answer is that Natasha's Law is not a separate piece of legislation living outside FIR — it is a set of amendments to the Food Information Regulations, made in 2019 and brought into force on 1 October 2021. Before that date, food that was prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) — packed on the same premises from which it is sold, before the customer orders it — did not need a full ingredients list; a "may contain" warning could suffice. Natasha's Law closed that gap. Now PPDS food must carry a full ingredient list with the 14 allergens emphasised in bold, just like factory-prepacked products. So Natasha's Law is best understood as FIR applied properly to food made and sold in the same place.
The other piece of the puzzle is retained EU law. The substantive rules — the FIC, Regulation (EU) 1169/2011 — came from the EU. After the Brexit transition period ended, the FIC was kept on the UK statute book as assimilated law (the term that replaced "retained EU law"). The labelling rules therefore continued almost unchanged, with a handful of UK-specific adjustments such as the requirement that the food business operator's address be a UK address. For most small businesses, the practical effect of Brexit on labelling has been small: the same particulars, enforced by the same authorities, under the same FIR 2014 framework.
Finally, a word on non-prepacked and loose food. If you sell food loose — unwrapped at a counter, or packed to order in front of the customer — you are not required to provide a full written ingredients list. However, you are still required to make allergen information available to the consumer, whether in writing or verbally, and to have a clear, consistent process for doing so. The exemption is from the full ingredient list, not from allergen transparency.
How FoodCore helps you get FIR labelling right
The mandatory particulars are not conceptually difficult, but they are fiddly and unforgiving — a wrong ingredient order, a missed compound sub-ingredient, or an allergen left un-emphasised can all put a label out of compliance. This is precisely where good software earns its keep. FoodCore is kitchen-management software built for small UK food businesses, and it is designed to take the manual error out of labelling.
From your recipes, FoodCore builds compliant ingredient lists in descending weight order, automatically bolds the 14 allergens wherever they appear (including inside compound ingredients), and generates PPDS labels ready to print for Natasha's Law. Because it also handles recipe costing, the same recipe data drives both your pricing and your labels, so they never drift out of sync. You can explore the labelling tools at food labelling software and the PPDS-specific features at Natasha's Law labelling software.
Plans start at £19/month for Essentials and £55/month for Core, with a 7-day free trial and no card required at signup.foodcore.io. To be clear about the boundaries: compliance is always the food business's own legal responsibility. FoodCore is a tool that makes correct labelling faster and more reliable — it is not a compliance authority, and you should always verify your labels against current FSA packaging and labelling guidance.
Further resources
- Food Standards Agency — packaging and labelling guidance
- The 14 major allergens under UK law
- When do UK food labels need a nutrition table?
- Natasha's Law: the complete guide
- Natasha's Law 2026 compliance refresher
- FoodCore food labelling software
- FoodCore Natasha's Law labelling software
- Get started with FoodCore
FIR 2014 — frequently asked questions
What is the Food Information Regulations 2014?
The Food Information Regulations 2014 (FIR 2014) are the UK regulations that enforce, within Great Britain, the food labelling rules originally set out in Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 — the Food Information to Consumers Regulation (FIC). They make it an offence to sell food that does not carry the required information and give local authorities the power to enforce. In short, the EU regulation sets the rules and FIR 2014 provides the UK enforcement framework, penalties and powers.
What are the mandatory particulars under FIR?
For prepacked food the mandatory particulars are: the name of the food; a list of ingredients in descending order by weight; allergens emphasised within that list; QUID (a quantitative declaration of certain emphasised ingredients); the net quantity; appropriate date marking (a 'use by' or 'best before' date); any special storage conditions or conditions of use; the name and address of the food business operator; the country of origin or place of provenance where required; instructions for use where needed; and a nutrition declaration. Not every particular applies to every product, but most prepacked foods need the full set.
What is QUID?
QUID stands for Quantitative Ingredient Declaration. It requires you to state the percentage of an ingredient when that ingredient appears in the name of the food (for example "beef lasagne"), is emphasised on the label in words or pictures, or is essential to characterise the product. The percentage is usually shown next to the ingredient in the ingredients list — for example "Beef (28%)". QUID helps consumers compare products and judge value, and applies to most prepacked food rather than to loose food.
Does FIR 2014 still apply after Brexit?
Yes. Regulation (EU) 1169/2011 was retained in UK law after the Brexit transition period as assimilated (formerly "retained EU") law, and FIR 2014 continues to provide the domestic enforcement framework. The substance of the labelling rules is largely unchanged, though some details — such as the address you give for the food business operator and certain origin rules — were updated for the UK context. You should always check current Food Standards Agency guidance, as requirements continue to evolve.
What's the difference between use by and best before?
A 'use by' date is about safety. It is mandatory on food that is highly perishable and could become unsafe — fresh meat, fish, dairy and many chilled ready meals — and it is illegal to sell food after its use-by date. A 'best before' date is about quality. It tells the consumer the food is at its best until that date; the food is usually still safe to eat afterwards but may have declined in flavour or texture. You choose the correct form of date marking based on the nature of the product.
How does FIR relate to Natasha's Law?
Natasha's Law is the popular name for the 2019 amendments to the Food Information Regulations that closed the labelling gap for prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) food. Before October 2021, PPDS food did not need a full ingredients list. Natasha's Law sits inside the FIR framework and now requires PPDS products to carry a full ingredients list with the 14 major allergens emphasised, just like factory-prepacked food. So Natasha's Law is not separate from FIR — it is a specific extension of it for food packed and sold on the same premises.
Do I need a nutrition table under FIR?
Most prepacked food sold to consumers must carry a mandatory back-of-pack nutrition declaration: energy plus fat, saturates, carbohydrate, sugars, protein and salt (the "big 7"), per 100g or 100ml. However there are exemptions — for example PPDS food under Natasha's Law does not require a nutrition declaration, and certain foods such as single-ingredient products, unprocessed products and food supplied in very small quantities are also exempt. Always check whether your specific product falls inside an exemption against FSA guidance.
FoodCore is kitchen management software built for small UK food businesses. We handle recipe costing, Natasha's Law labels, shopping lists and order tracking.
Get started →