each such certificate shall be signed by the inspector who made the inspection covered by the certificate, and if more than one inspector participated in the inspection of the lot of poultry, each such inspector shall sign the certificate with respect to such lot. If the inspection of a lot covered by a certificate was made by a food inspector, such certificate shall also be signed by the inspector in charge when such inspection was made. Any inspector is authorized to issue a poultry inspection certificate with respect to any other poultry product inspected by him.

(b) The original and one copy of each poultry inspection certificate shall be issued to the applicant who requested such certificate, and one copy shall be retained by the inspector for filing. The inspector who issues any inspection certificate is authorized to furnish an additional copy of such certificate upon the request of an interested party. The person who sold the live poultry involved to the official establishment is an interested party for purposes of this section.

[37 FR 9706, May 16, 1972, as amended at 39 FR 36000, Oct. 7, 1974]

§381.109 Form of official poultry inspection certificate.

(a) The official poultry inspection certificate authorized by this subpart is a paper certificate (Form MP-505) for signature by an inspector, bearing the legend

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE MEAT AND POULTRY INSPECTION PROGRAM

POULTRY INSPECTION CERTIFICATE

and the seal of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with a certification that the poultry described therein had been inspected in compliance with the Regulations of the Secretary of Agriculture Governing the Inspection of Poultry and Poultry Products.

(b) The certificate also bears a serial number such as "B 3208" and shows the respective name and address of the applicant, the shipper or seller and the receiver or buyer and the net weight in pounds of amount passed, amount rejected or condemned, type of poultry,

Subpart N-Labeling and
Containers

§381.115 Containers of inspected and passed poultry products required to be labeled.

Except as may be authorized in specific cases by the Administrator with respect to shipment of poultry products between official establishments, each shipping container and each immediate container of any inspected and passed poultry product shall at the time it leaves the official establishment bear a label which contains information, and has been approved, in accordance with this subpart.

§381.116 Wording on labels of immediate containers.

(a) Each label for use on immediate containers for inspected and passed poultry products shall bear on the principal display panel (except as otherwise permitted in the regulations), the items of information required by this subpart. Such items of information shall be in distinctly legible form. Except as provided in §381.128, all words, statements and other information required by or under authority of the Act to appear on the label or labeling shall appear thereon in the English language: Provided, however, That in the case of products distributed solely in Puerto Rico, Spanish may be substituted for English for all printed matter except the USDA inspection legend.

(b) The principal display panel shall be the part of a label that is most likely to be displayed, presented, shown, or examined under customary conditions of display for sale. The principal display panel shall be large enough to accommodate all the mandatory label information required to be placed thereon by the regulations with clarity and conspicuousness and without being obscured by design or vignettes, or crowding. Where packages bear alternate principal display panels, information required to be placed on the principal display panel shall be duplicated on each principal display panel. The area that is to bear the principal display panel shall be:

(1) In the case of a rectangular package, one entire side, the area of which

is the product of the height times the width of that side.

(2) In the case of a cylindrical or nearly cylindrical container:

(i) An area on the side of the container that is 40 percent of the product of the height of the container times the circumference, or

(ii) A panel, the width of which is one-third of the circumference and the height of which is as high as the container: Provided, however, That there is, immediately to the right or left of such principal display panel, a panel which has a width not greater than 20 percent of the circumference and a height as high as the container, and which is reserved for information prescribed in §§ 381.118, 381.122, and 381.123. Such panel shall be known as the "20 percent panel" and such information may be shown on that panel in lieu of showing it on the principal display panel as provided in this § 381.116.

(3) In the case of a container of any other shape, 40 percent of the total surface of the container.

In determining the area of the principal display panel, exclude tops, bottoms, flanges at tops and bottoms of cans, and shoulders and necks of bottles or jars.

(c) (1) The information panel is that part of a label that is the first surface to the right of the principal display panel as observed by an individual facing the principal display panel, with the following exceptions:

(i) If the first surface to the right of the principal display panel is too small to accommodate the required information or is otherwise unusable label space, e.g., folded flaps, tear strips, opening flaps, heat-sealed flaps, the next panel to the right of this part of the label may be used.

(ii) If the package has one or more alternate principal display panels, the information panel is to the right of any principal display panel.

(iii) If the top of the container is the principal display panel and the package has no alternate principal display panel, the information panel is any panel adjacent to the principal display panel.

(2) (i) Except as otherwise permitted in this part, all information required to appear on the principal display panel

or permitted to appear on the information panel shall appear on the same panel unless there is insufficient space. In determining the sufficiency of the available space, except as otherwise prescribed in this part, any vignettes, designs, and any other nonmandatory information shall not be considered. If there is insufficient space for all required information to appear on a single panel, it may be divided between the principal display panel and the information panel, provided that the information required by any given provision of this part, such as the ingredients statement, is not divided and appears on the same panel.

(ii) All information appearing on the information panel pursuant to this section shall appear in one place without intervening material, such as designs or vignettes.

[37 FR 9706, May 16, 1972, as amended at 40 FR 11347, Mar. 11, 1975; 59 FR 40214, Aug. 8, 1994]

§ 381.117 Name of product and other labeling.

(a) The label shall show the name of the product, which, in the case of a poultry product which purports to be or is represented as a product for which a definition and standard of identity or composition is prescribed in subpart P, shall be the name of the food specified in the standard, and in the case of any other poultry product shall be the common or usual name of the food, if any there be, and if there is none, a truthful descriptive designation.

(b) The name of the product required to be shown on labels for fresh or frozen raw whole carcasses of poultry shall be in either of the following forms: The name of the kind (such as chicken, turkey, or duck) preceded by the qualifying term "young” or “mature" or "old", whichever is appropriate; or the appropriate class name as described in § 381.170(a). The name of the kind may be used in addition to the class name, but the name of the kind alone without the qualifying age or class term is not acceptable as the name of the product, except that the name "chicken" may be used without such qualification with respect to a ready-to-cook pack of fresh or frozen cut-up young chickens, or a half of a

young chicken, and the name "duckling" may be used without such qualification with respect to a readyto-cook pack of fresh or frozen young ducks. The class name may be appropriately modified by changing the word form, such as using the term "roasting chicken", rather than "roaster." The appropriate names for cut-up parts are set forth in §381.170(b). When naming parts cut from young poultry, the identity of both the kind of poultry and the name of the part shall be included in the product name. The product name for parts or portions cut from mature poultry shall include, along with the part or portion name, the class name or the qualifying term "mature." The name of the product for cooked or heat processed poultry products shall include the kind name of the poultry from which the product was prepared but need not include the class name or the qualifying term "mature."

(c) Poultry products containing light and dark chicken or turkey meat in quantities other than the natural proportions, as indicated in Table 1 in this paragraph, must have a qualifying statement in conjunction with the name of the product indicating, as shown in Table 1, the types of meat actually used, except that when the product contains less than 10 percent cooked deboned poultry meat or is processed in such a manner that the character of the light and dark meat is not distinguishable, the qualifying statement will not be required, unless the product bears a label referring to the light or dark meat content. In the latter case, the qualifying statement is required if the light and dark meat are not present in natural proportions. The qualifying statement must be in type at least one-half the size and of equal boldness as the name of the product; e.g., Boned Turkey (Dark Meat).

(d) Boneless poultry products shall be labeled in a manner that accurately describes their actual form and composition. The product name shall specify the form of the product (e.g., emulsified, finely chopped, etc.), and the kind name of the poultry, and if the product does not consist of natural proportions of skin and fat, as they occur in the whole carcass, shall also include terminology that describes the actual composition. If the product is cooked, it shall be so labeled. For the purpose of this paragraph, natural proportions of skin, as found on a whole chicken or turkey carcass, will be considered to be as follows:

Boneless poultry product shall not have a bone solids content of more than 1 percent, calculated on a weight basis.

(e) On the label of any "Mechanically Separated (Kind of Poultry)" described in §381.173, the name of such product : shall be followed immediately by the phrase: "with excess skin" unless such product is made from poultry product that does not include skin in excess of the natural proportion of skin present on the whole carcass, as specified in : paragraph (d) of this section. Appropriate terminology on the label shall indicate if heat treatment has been used in the preparation of the product. The labeling information described in this paragraph shall be identified on the label before the product leaves the establishment at which it is manufac

tured.

[37 FR 9706, May 16, 1972, as amended at 60 FR 55983, Nov. 3, 1995]

§381.118 Ingredients statement.

(a)(1) The label shall show a statement of the ingredients in the poultry product if the product is fabricated from two or more ingredients. Such ingredients shall be listed by their common or usual names in the order of their descending proportions, except as prescribed in paragraph (a)(2) of this section.

(2)(i) Product ingredients which are present in individual amounts of 2 percent or less by weight may be listed in the ingredients statement in other than descending order of predominance: Provided, That such ingredients are listed by their common or usual names at the end of the ingredients statement and preceded by a quantifying statement, such as "Contains percent or less of

or "Less than

percent of ." The percentage of the ingredient(s) shall be filled in with a threshold level of 2 percent, 1.5 percent, 1.0 percent, or 0.5 percent, as appropriate. No ingredient to which the quantifying statement applies may be present in an amount greater than the stated threshold. Such a quantifying statement may also be utilized when an ingredients statement contains a listing of ingredients by individual components. Each component listing may utilize the required quantifying statement at the end of each component ingredients listing.

(ii) Such ingredients may be adjusted in the product formulation without a change being made in the ingredients statement on the labeling, provided that the adjusted amount complies with §381.147(f)(4) and subpart P of this part, and does not exceed the amount shown in the quantifying statement. Any such adjustments to the formulation shall be provided to the inspectorin-charge.

(b) For the purpose of this paragraph, the term "chicken meat," unless modified by an appropriate adjective, is construed to mean deboned white and dark meat; whereas the term "chicken" may include other edible parts such as skin and fat not in excess of their natural proportions, in addition to the chicken meat. If the term "chicken meat" is listed and the product also contains skin, giblets, or fat, it is necessary to list each such ingredient. Similar principles shall be followed in listing ingredients of poultry products processed from other kinds of poultry.

(c) The terms spice, natural flavor, natural flavoring, flavor or flavoring may be used in the following manner:

(1) The term "spice" means any aromatic vegetable substance in the whole, broken, or ground form, with

the exceptions of onions, garlic and celery, whose primary function in food is seasoning rather than nutritional and from which no portion of any volatile oil or other flavoring principle has been removed. Spices include the spices listed in 21 CFR 182.10, and 184.

(2) The term "natural flavor," "natural flavoring," "flavor” or "flavoring" means the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or any other edible portions of a plant, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose primary function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional. Natural flavors include the natural essence or extractives obtained from plants listed in 21 CFR 182.10, 182.20, 182.40, 182.50 and 184, and the substances listed in 21 CFR 172.510. The term natural flavor, natural flavoring, flavor or flavoring may also be used to designate spices, powdered onion, powdered garlic, and powdered celery.

(i) Natural flavor, natural flavoring, flavor or flavoring as described in paragraph (c)(1) and (2) of this section, which are also colors shall be designated as "natural flavor and coloring," "natural flavoring and coloring,' "flavor and coloring" or "flavoring and coloring" unless designated by their common or usual name.

(ii) Any ingredient not designated in paragraphs (c) (1) and (2) of this section whose function is flavoring, either in whole or in part, must be designated by its common or usual name. Those ingredients which are of livestock or poultry origin must be designated by names that include the species and livestock and poultry tissues from which the ingredients are derived.

(d) On containers of frozen dinners, entrees, and pizzas, and similarly packaged products in cartons, the ingredient statement may be placed on the front riser panel: Provided, That the words "see ingredients," followed immediately by an arrow pointing to the front riser panel, are placed on the principal display panel immediately

above the location of such statement, without intervening printing or designs.

(e) The ingredients statement may be placed on the information panel, except as otherwise permitted in this subchapter.

(f) Establishments may interchange the identity of two kinds of poultry (e.g., chicken and turkey, chicken meat and turkey meat) used in a product formulation without changing the product's ingredient statement or product name under the following conditions:

(1)(i) The two kinds of poultry used must comprise at least 70 percent by weight of the poultry and the poultry ingredients [e.g. giblets, skin or fat in excess of natural proportions, or mechanically separated (kind)] used; and,

(ii) Neither of the two kinds of poultry used can be less than 30 percent by weight of the total poultry and poultry ingredients used;

(2) The word "and" in lieu of a comma must be shown between the declaration of the two kinds of poultry in the ingredients statement and in the product name.

[37 FR 9706, May 16, 1972, as amended at 55 FR 7294, Mar. 1, 1990; 55 FR 26422, June 28, 1990; 58 FR 38049, July 15, 1993; 59 FR 40215, Aug. 8, 1994; 63 FR 11360, Mar. 9, 1998]

§381.119 Declaration of artificial fla. voring or coloring.

(a) When an artificial smoke flavoring or a smoke flavoring is added as an ingredient in the formula of any poultry product, there shall appear on the label, in prominent letters and contiguous to the name of the product, a statement such as "Artificial Smoke Flavoring Added" or "Smoke Flavoring Added," as applicable, and the ingredient statement shall identify any artificial smoke flavoring or smoke flavoring added as an ingredient in the formula of the poultry product.

(b) Any poultry product which bears or contains any artificial flavoring other than an artificial smoke flavoring or a smoke flavoring, or bears or contains any artificial coloring shall bear a statement stating that fact on the immediate container or, if there is none, on the product.