The PIF was developed by the food industry in order to help manufacturers and distributors uphold food safety and public health, in the most effective and efficient way.

We talk to a lot of people who work with PIFs every day, so we can share some tips for getting the most value from PIF V6 and streamlining compliance.

  1. Only complete the sections you need

You only need to fill out the sections that are relevant to your product. Plus, you can provide only the information you’re prepared to share or that is required by your trading partner. For example, in some cases, to protect your IP you may not wish to provide information about every ingredient in the material that you are describing, providing only a PIF with summary information for the material.

  1. Use PIF V6 as a simple checklist for health claims and imports

PIF V6 sets out all the current information you need to substantiate any health or nutrition claim you make for a food product, including Health Star Ratings. Your electronic PIF is a single source of truth, always up to date and centrally available, so you can easily find the data you need if asked by a regulator or your customer to support your claim.

It also sets out all the data you need to collect on imported ingredients, such as genetic modification and additives, to ensure that they’re approved for use in Australia.

  1. Use PIF V6 to inform compliance decisions

Just because your supplier has submitted information to you (whether that’s in a spreadsheet, by email or in a PIF V6) that doesn’t guarantee it’s correct. You’ll always need to do a sense-check to decide if the information supplied is valid, based on what you know about the product. PIF V6 ensures that you have all the information you need to make this judgement, in a logical structure that’s easily searchable and sharable.