Charles Fisher, KHQ Lawyers

Since completing his Bachelor of Laws and Legal Practice and Bachelor of Arts in 2006, Charles has spent the entirety of his legal career staring at the Food Standards Code (among many other pieces of food-specific regulation). This has led to Charles being one of the leading consultants and trainers on food marketing, compliance, labelling, classification, licensing, safety and food crisis management.

As a result, Charles’ clients seek his expertise on:

• The marketing of food products – especially health, natural and origin claims under both food regulations and consumer protection laws
• Advising on the best regulatory pathway for innovative products to get to the Australian and New Zealand market
• Whether a particular product is a food, cosmetic, special purpose food, complementary medicine or therapeutic good (or all of the above!)
• Assessing whether a new ingredient could be regulated a novel food, a nutritive substance, a non-traditional food, a food additive, a processing aid or even a poison
• How to best classify your product under the Food Standards Code (and other regulations) to allow the most recipe flexibility (and food fortification)
• Recipe and label compliance (including the new changes to Plain English Allergen labelling)
• The regulatory implications of online sales and marketing of food products, particularly authority to leave and labelling implications
• The licensing obligations that can apply to any business that sells or handles food, including liquor licensing and primary production and food delivery services
• Negotiation with food regulators including but not limited to State and Territory Departments of Health, primary production regulators, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the Federal Department of Agriculture, Water & the Environment etc, and
• Advice in food safety crisis situations, particularly on the decision whether to recall a product or not.

RECOGNITION

Charles is a recommended lawyer in the Competition & Trade category of Legal 500 Asia Pacific (2023).