Supreme Court presses for front-of-pack warning labels on packaged food

The Supreme Court on Thursday said it is worried about the health of Indians, particularly children, and urged everyone involved in food safety to treat the question of front-of-pack warning labels on packaged products high in salt, sugar and fat as a matter of national interest.

A Bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran said it would issue a detailed order seeking information from stakeholders on what it described as a serious matter. The order is expected to be uploaded within a day or two, and the case has been listed for hearing on September 28. The Bench said it had done some homework of its own and asked the parties to study the order once it is available.

During the brief hearing on a plea by the public charitable trust 3S and Our Health Society, the Bench asked the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) whether it had laid down any guidelines to determine when the contents of a packet cross a threshold and qualify as high in sugar, salt or fat. The court noted that nutritional details are always printed on the rear of a packet.

Appearing for the FSSAI, senior advocate Maninder Singh said international practice requires two conditions to be shown on the rear of a packet — the quantity per 100 grams and the quantity per serving.

Senior advocate Devadatt Kamat, appearing for an intervenor, argued that a snack product was being placed on the same footing as nutritional foods such as eggs and salted cashew, and contended that ultra-processed foods must carry a stronger warning. He suggested that since red is already used to denote non-vegetarian food and green vegetarian, a different colour could be used for warning labels on ultra-processed items. The Bench took the suggestions on record.

In a compliance affidavit filed earlier, the FSSAI said it has proposed a prominent front-of-pack warning label in a red hexagonal shape for products high in any two or more nutrients of concern — added saturated fat, added sugar and salt — based on thresholds specified in the Dietary Guidelines for Indians, 2024 issued by ICMR-NIN. The label would carry declarations such as "High Fat", "High Sugar", "High Salt" and/or "Highly Sweetened Beverage" so that consumers can readily identify such products.

The affidavit was filed in response to the court's August 13 order, passed while hearing the trust's plea, which sought directions to the Centre, states and Union territories to implement mandatory front-of-package warning labels on packaged foods. On that occasion, the court directed the Centre to decide on the visual appearance of the labelling and asked whether India should remain an underdeveloped country, saying it did not approve of the government's stance that matching international standards, particularly those of developed countries, is not possible.

The court has said front-of-package labelling is necessary to create awareness, especially among children increasingly drawn to junk food, and criticised the FSSAI for the delay in introducing warning labels, noting that obesity has been recognised as a public health challenge in India. It asked the Union government to consult experts and settle the visual appearance of the labels — coloured indicators, interpretive words, numbers, letters or symbols, numerical information or percentages — giving it two weeks to place a final decision on record, and warning that further directions would follow if the government did not act on its own.

The FSSAI affidavit also proposed that front-of-pack nutrition labelling be rolled out in phases to allow consumer acceptance and give industry time to reformulate products. Phase I would cover products high in two or more of the specified nutrients — added fat, added sugar and salt — along with specified sweetened beverages, while Phase II would extend the warning to products high in any one of them.