California exempts supplements from food date-labeling rules

WASHINGTON — California has enacted legislation that expressly excludes dietary supplements from the state’s standardized food date-labeling requirements, resolving uncertainty about whether supplement manufacturers would need to change established expiration and shelf-life dating practices.

AB 2779 clarifies that dietary supplements are not included in the definition of a “food item for human consumption” for the state’s date-labeling requirements. The Council for Responsible Nutrition said it advocated for the exemption after questions arose about whether supplements could be subject to rules originally established under AB 660.

AB 660, enacted in 2024, standardized date-labeling terminology for covered food products manufactured on or after July 1, 2026. The law requires specific language, such as “BEST if Used by” for quality dates and “USE by” for safety dates, while restricting other terminology. Earlier this year, CRN said uncertainty about the law’s application to supplements could affect brands and retailers because supplements commonly use expiration dates to communicate shelf life and ingredient potency.

According to CRN, requiring supplements to follow conventional food terminology could have forced manufacturers to modify labels and created confusion about the meaning of expiration dates on supplement products.

“This was not simply a technical correction,” said Steve Mister, president and CEO of CRN. “Without a clear exemption, responsible supplement manufacturers faced the prospect of changing labels to comply with requirements that were written for conventional foods and were never intended for our products. Those changes could have disrupted longstanding practices for communicating shelf life and potency while making the information less—not more—meaningful to consumers. CRN worked to make sure that unintended outcome did not occur.”

CRN said it had been engaged on the issue since lawmakers considered AB 660 and had received indications during the legislative process that dietary supplements were not intended to fall within the law’s scope. When questions about implementation subsequently emerged, the association pushed for statutory clarification.

The organization continued seeking clarification as recently as this year, warning that uncertainty could create compliance issues for supplement companies operating nationally.

“This is precisely why CRN maintains an aggressive state advocacy program,” said Julia Gustafson, vice president, government relations at CRN. “A law may be written with conventional foods in mind, but if the statutory language inadvertently captures dietary supplements, our members can suddenly face significant compliance uncertainty and unnecessary operational changes. Our job is to identify those consequences and get them corrected.”

CRN also advocated for an urgency clause allowing the clarification to take effect immediately rather than on the legislation’s ordinary effective date in January.

“The urgency clause is critical because regulatory certainty delayed is regulatory certainty denied,” Gustafson said. “Companies should not have been forced to contemplate label changes, packaging decisions or other compliance measures for requirements that policymakers agreed were never intended to apply to dietary supplements in the first place.”