What the label has to carry
Updated
On this page6
The five
- Statement of identity, which for a standardized syrup is the standardized name and commits you to the standard.
- Net quantity, which comes from the bottle and the fill and is a claim about every unit.
- Ingredients, in descending order by weight. A single-ingredient syrup has a very short list and the rule still applies.
- Allergens, declared as required.
- Name and place of business of the responsible party.
And the grade, if you claim one
A grade statement and a color class are a claim about the batch, so they have to be assigned per batch rather than printed once and used forever. Pre-printed labels carrying a fixed color class are a trap: the day a batch comes out darker, the label is wrong and the stock is unusable.
Order labels last
Net quantity depends on a settled bottle and fill, the statement of identity depends on hitting the density, and the color class depends on the batch. All three move while a product is being developed, and the reprint costs more than the wait.
Claims a syrup label is tempted to make
Pure, natural, raw, unfiltered and organic all mean something to a buyer and not all of them mean the same thing to a regulator. Organic is a certification rather than an adjective. Unfiltered contradicts the grade requirement to be free of cloudiness and sediment, so it is a claim that quietly rules out a grade statement on the same label.
Keep the artwork and the formulation dated together
The quiet failure is a product that changed and a label that did not. A new sweetener, a different fruit, a supplier swap that alters an ingredient’s makeup: each can change what the ingredient list or the allergen statement must say while nothing about the bottle looks different. Filing the artwork and the formulation sheet in one place, dated together, is what catches it.
That also answers the question a buyer or an inspector asks most often, which is not whether the label is right today but whether you can show which label went on which batch.