Supreme Court gives FSSAI ten days to date its food warning labels

The Supreme Court has given the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India ten days to explain how and when front-of-pack warning labels will appear on packaged food. Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran issued the order late on 10 September. FSSAI must file an affidavit before the next hearing on 28 September. The bench also asked the Centre to consider teaching children how to read those labels in school.

FSSAI had proposed two phases. Phase one would put red hexagonal warnings on products that exceed limits in at least two of three categories: added sugar, salt and saturated fat. Phase two would extend the same warnings to products high in even one of those nutrients. The regulator said the split would give buyers time to get used to the marks and give companies time to reformulate. The court was not persuaded. Assessment of consumer acceptability or giving the industry adequate time for reformulation cannot be reason enough for this uncertainty in time, the order said. A reasonable, scientifically justified and clearly defined timeline must divide the two phases, or phase two could be indefinitely postponed.

The bench also asked why a warning should wait for two nutrients when one nutrient in excess is already a health risk. Additional Solicitor General Brijender Chahar told the court the day before the order that the government was open to making labels mandatory for products high in even one nutrient. A government source later told Reuters that FSSAI would study the order and was willing to run both phases together.

Mint counted 13 questions in the 10 September text. They cover the scientific basis for the thresholds, the shape and colour of the mark, the scope of products, and the rollout calendar. On 13 August the same court had already tied front-of-pack warnings to the right to health, with children named as the group most exposed to impulse buying. The new order adds a school-literacy request to that health frame. A label that a child cannot read does not, in the bench's account, do the work the right requires.

The labels FSSAI sketched for the court would read high fat, high sugar, high salt and highly sweetened beverage. Colour and geometry are not decoration. A red hexagon is meant to be read at arm's length on a crowded shelf, in the second a parent spends on a packet. That is why the bench asked about design as well as thresholds. A mark that is small, or that sits on the back of the pack, does not do the work the August order described.

Industry will treat the affidavit date as the first hard checkpoint. A single-phase rollout would put red hexagons on a much larger set of biscuits, namkeen, drinks and instant foods than a two-nutrient trigger. Reformulation cycles in that category are measured in months, not weeks. A two-phase scheme with a dated second step would still force companies to print new packs twice. Either way the printer, not the press release, is the constraint.

India's packaged food market is large enough that a design choice in the affidavit will show up on shelves in every language the country prints. The court has not drafted the hexagon. It has said the regulator cannot leave phase two without a clock. Ten days is a short time to produce the science, the design and the calendar the bench listed. Twenty-eight September is when those answers will be read aloud.