Why compliance doesn't travel: what food brands get wrong when they export

In April 2026, Speciality Food Magazine published a guide to exporting in the fine food sector. I contributed to that piece alongside a number of other voices from the industry, and the conversations it sparked are worth going deeper on.

The full article is well worth reading. Here I want to expand on the three points I raised there, because each one represents a pattern we see repeatedly at Taama.

Mistake 1: assuming compliance transfers between markets

The most common and most expensive assumption brands make is that a product which is compliant in one market is compliant in another. It almost never is.

Labels are the most visible example. A label that works perfectly in the UK can be non-compliant in Australia, Singapore, or Canada, not because the product is wrong, but because the mandatory fields, formatting, and claim requirements differ market by market. In Australia, the Nutrition Information Panel has a specific format required by FSANZ. In Singapore, the HSA has its own requirements for health supplement labelling. In Canada, bilingual French/English is a legal requirement. None of these are optional.

Claims are an even bigger risk area. 'Boosts immunity' is not automatically an allowed claim anywhere. 'Supports brain function' is not interchangeable across markets. These types of claims need to match authorised wording and be backed by specific ingredients at the right levels, vitamins C and D with approved claims are the clearest examples in the EU and UK. In Australia, the TGA's Permissible Indications Determination controls exactly what can be said and under which registration pathway.

And it's not just on-pack. Marketing copy counts. If your website says 'detoxifies the body' or 'reduces anxiety', that can be just as problematic as putting it on pack, in some markets, more so.

Mistake 2: trying to 'keep up with regulations' as a general practice

Monitoring regulatory changes in general is a losing game. The landscape is too large, the updates too frequent, and the implications too product-specific to track at a broad level.

The better approach: keep one solid product file, your formulation, specs, claims, artwork, and assess each market against that file. When you know your product precisely, a regulatory change only matters if it affects your specific ingredients, claims, or product category. Most changes won't. The ones that do are urgent. Trying to track everything in between is noise.

This is the core of what Taama does. Instead of monitoring regulations in general, the platform checks your specific product against each market's requirements and flags what's actually relevant. Common additives or botanicals can fall into grey areas depending on how they're classified locally, that's where the risk concentrates, and where a product-specific check is worth far more than a general compliance briefing.

Mistake 3: conflating regulatory compliance with tariffs and trade

These sit alongside each other but they're different challenges. Regulatory compliance is about whether your product is legally acceptable in a market: the right ingredients, the right claims, the right label format, the right registration pathway. Trade is about how the product moves across borders: tariffs, duties, customs documentation, shipping costs.

Mixing the two is where a lot of confusion comes in, particularly for brands navigating both simultaneously. The practical implication: solve them separately. Build your regulatory compliance case first, know what pathway your product needs in each market, get the dossier right, get the label right. Then work the logistics and trade side with a freight forwarder or customs broker who knows the specific route.

Brands that conflate the two often end up with neither solved properly. The product gets to the border and either can't enter (regulatory) or the cost model doesn't work (trade). Both are fixable, but they need different people, different tools, and different timelines.

Taama helps food and supplement brands assess compliance across 18 markets, covering ingredient permissibility, regulatory classification, label compliance, and dossier completeness before you commit. See what we cover for your markets