Food Law

Food law can be described as the intersection of all the various laws which regulate food sale, production, processing and distribution, as well as food science and engineering to enable a thorough and practical understanding of these laws.

In South Africa, there is no single codified piece of food legislation which can be referenced to determine compliance with the law and for each and every food product there may be multiple applicable Acts and regulations. Some of these Acts include the Foodstuffs, Cosmetics and Disinfectants Act, the Agricultural Products Standards Act, the Meat Safety Act, the Liquor Products Act, the Legal Metrology Act, the National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications Act as well as the Consumer Protection Act. In addition, each of the Acts has a plethora of sometimes overlapping regulations promulgated thereunder to which should be added the South African National Standards, some of which are compulsory depending on the foodstuff concerned.

An example of the complexity is the labelling of Genetically Modified foodstuffs where the Department of Health has a regulation requiring labelling of foodstuffs where the nutritional nature thereof has been altered and even permitting functional claims in respect thereof, and the Consumer Protection Act which requires the labelling of all foodstuffs which have in excess of 5% GM content to be labelled, without change, “Contains Genetically Modified Organisms”.

These Acts and Regulations are constantly being revised and updated, often without due concern for how changes to one affect other related Acts and Regulations. Our attorneys have experience with the drafting process and can assist with updating, commenting and interpretation in this respect.

Our senior partner, Mr Luterek, holds degrees in both Chemical Engineering and Law and is a registered Attorney, Patent Attorney, and Professional Engineer and has worked in Food R&D at the CSIR, as a senior process engineer at APV, before completing his law studies and becoming a partner of Hahn & Hahn attorneys. He is a Custodian Member of the South African Association for Food Science and Technology (SAAFoST) and sits on both the Executive Counsel of the FSI of the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa as well as serving on the Food Law Advisory Group of the Department of Health. He has made numerous submissions both to Parliament and to the various government departments on proposed amendments to the various Food Laws and the Regulations thereunder.

We are the only South African members of the Food Lawyers Network (FLN), an international network of food lawyers around the world and through this network we are able to assist clients to get advice in other jurisdictions as well.