What Must Appear on a Food Label in Quebec (CFIA Rules)

The basics: what has to appear on every label

Picture a small Quebec preserves maker prepping a new jar design for a big retail order. The graphic designer nails the visual, the client signs off, the run goes to print, and three weeks later a retailer's compliance team flags the label before it ever reaches the shelf, because the common name sits in a decorative font too small to measure against the CFIA's minimum height. The order stalls, the print run gets scrapped, and the delivery window slips by a month. A food label sold in Canada isn't a free design canvas. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) requires a specific set of information, and missing even one item can be enough to get your product pulled off the shelf.

The common name of the product has to appear in the principal display panel, with a character height of at least 1.6 mm (measured on the lowercase letter "o"), that minimum drops to 0.8 mm if the principal display surface is 10 cm² or less. Net quantity is expressed in metric units: grams (g), kilograms (kg), millilitres (mL), or litres (L).

Next comes the ingredient list, generally in descending order by weight, a few exceptions exist (seasonings totalling 2% or less of the product's weight can be grouped in any order at the end), but priority allergens always have to be clearly declared, no matter how small the proportion. The name and address of the person responsible for the product, you or your distributor, also has to appear, but unlike the rest of the mandatory information, it can be shown in a single official language instead of both English and French.

A full nutrition facts table is mandatory for most prepackaged foods, but several exemptions exist: very small packages (available display surface of 15 cm² or less), raw single-ingredient meat, poultry, or fish that hasn't been ground, foods prepared and sold only where they were made, or sold directly by the producer at a public market or craft fair. These exemptions no longer apply once the product carries a nutrition or health claim, or contains added vitamins/minerals. As of January 1, 2026, a front-of-package nutrition symbol is added to that list for certain products, we cover that in a separate article in this series.

In practice, the nutrition table exemptions are where we see the most confusion. A small-batch hot sauce sold only at a public market genuinely doesn't need one, until the producer adds a "reduced sodium" claim to the front label, at which point the exemption disappears and the full table becomes mandatory again. That kind of change usually happens on the marketing side, disconnected from whoever is proofing the label, which is exactly how an otherwise compliant product ends up shipped without a table it now legally needs.

Allergens and dates: the items that trigger a recall

Priority allergens must be declared either directly in the ingredient list or in a separate "Contains" statement placed right after it. If you use a Contains statement, it has to list every allergen present, even ones already named earlier, missing one there is one of the most common causes of a voluntary recall.

A "best before" date is mandatory when your product's shelf life is 90 days or less. Beyond that, a packaged-on date is generally enough. We cover the exact accepted date formats in another article in this series.

Country of origin isn't required on every product. It mainly applies to imported foods, in specific categories: wine and spirits, dairy, honey, fish, meat, maple products, eggs, and fresh or processed fruits and vegetables. A product manufactured and sold directly by a Quebec processor generally doesn't need it, unless it carries a "Product of Canada"-style claim.

We see the 90-day threshold catch producers off guard more than almost any other rule on this list. A fresh sauce reformulated with a preservative that stretches shelf life from 60 to 120 days doesn't just change a shelf-life estimate, it can shift a "best before" date from mandatory to optional, and the label needs to reflect that shift, not just the new ingredient on the back panel.

What changes depending on your type of product

A business selling only within Quebec doesn't face exactly the same obligations as one distributing across several provinces. Federally inspected meat and poultry products, for instance, come with additional requirements.

Very small packages get some relief, notably on the nutrition facts table. Those exemptions exist, but they're limited and often misunderstood, when in doubt, check directly with the CFIA rather than guessing.

If you're changing package formats or starting to sell outside Quebec, that's the right moment to redo the whole exercise rather than patching your existing label item by item.

We've seen this play out with a Quebec charcuterie producer expanding into Ontario grocery chains: the label that worked perfectly for direct farmers'-market sales suddenly needed country-of-origin marking on certain ingredients and a full nutrition table, because two of the exemptions that applied to their original sales channel no longer covered a wider retail footprint. Nothing about the recipe changed, only the distribution did, and that was enough to trigger new obligations.

The mistakes we keep seeing on proofs

Ingredients not in the right order. Manufacturer contact information in English only. An allergen present in the recipe but missing from the label because a supplier changed and nobody flagged it.

These are almost never bad-faith errors. They happen when a label gets updated quickly without revalidating the whole thing. The right habit: run a full check every time an ingredient, a supplier, or a format changes, not just the text you think you touched.

The financial hit is rarely just the reprint. A retailer that pulls a mislabeled SKU from its system often won't reorder until the correction is verified, which can mean weeks off the shelf during exactly the season a seasonal product needed to sell. For a small producer, that's a bigger loss than the cost of the label run itself.

A compliant label sells better too

An accurate, complete label isn't just there to pass inspection. It reassures the buyer, it clears the grocery shelf faster, and it saves you a full reprint if a product ever gets returned.

If you're unsure about a specific item, talk to us before printing, it's always simpler than finding the problem after the boxes arrive.

Think of the label check the same way you'd think of a final proof for spelling, cheap and fast before the plates are made, expensive and slow once thousands of units are already boxed.