When companies secure the ability to produce specialty food labels for themselves, they can assure the consumer that the information on their product comes from a legitimate source. Another reason a business might want to take this under their control could be to assert their authority as the owners of that content. Consumers can be confused by conflicting information, especially if product labels appear that are created by some other source. This may not happen often, but it is sure to cause some friction when it does, as it recently did in British supermarkets.
The New York Times reports that boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese appeared to carry sticker food labels that claimed that the boxes contained genetically modified wheat and that it “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.”
One of these boxes was discovered by an area student who posted a photo of this new label online, prompting an eventual response from the company, that claimed that there was no official regional distributor for the product and the labels did not come from them. Tesco, a grocery chain, suggested that it may have come from the distributor Innovative Bites, but there has reportedly not been any official reply on their end.
However erroneous an occurrence like this actually is, it’s clear that making labels carries with it certain responsibilities and assumptions that consumers are likely to notice. Companies that know how to make labels on their own can see greater brand success in their industry because of it.