The Supreme Court on September 28 rejected the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’s proposed timetable for introducing front-of-pack warning labels on packaged foods. A bench of Justices J. B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran called the schedule unreasonable and reserved its order on the timetable and other disputed implementation questions.
FSSAI had proposed four months to frame and notify the regulations, followed by a 365-day period of voluntary implementation for food businesses. The court questioned why a fresh consultation and a year of voluntary compliance were needed after earlier stakeholder work and said it would set a binding schedule. It also rejected a petitioner’s demand for immediate implementation as impractical.
The proposal under review uses prominent red hexagonal warnings on products considered high in salt, sugar or fat. An industry association said it did not oppose front-of-pack warnings but argued that the red symbol could be confused with India’s non-vegetarian mark and that nutrient thresholds should reflect serving sizes rather than only a 100-gram basis. Those are industry submissions, not findings accepted by the court.
The bench has not yet published its final timetable, and the warning-label regime described in the hearing is not yet a completed nationwide rollout. The court said its eventual directions would bind the regulator and indicated that it would later review compliance. Treating the September 28 hearing as a final rule already in force would therefore overstate the decision.