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Brazilian manufacturers must comply with warning label regulation, says court

The Federal Court of São Paulo has ruled that Brazilian manufacturers must comply with front-of-pack labelling regulation that requires unhealthy products to feature warning labels, scrapping a last-minute one-year extension.

The February court injunction went in favour of the Brazilian Institute of Consumer Protection (IDEC), which had brought legal proceedings against the regulatory agency, ANVISA, for extending the October 2023 deadline by one year.

Front-of-pack warning label extension scrapped

In 2020, Brazilian policymakers approved the regulation RDC nº 429/2020, which introduced front-of-pack warning labels on products that exceed certain nutrient thresholds. The mandatory nutrition warning label features a magnifying glass that alerts consumers to products high in sodium, added sugar, and saturated fat.

Manufacturers had a grace period of three years to ensure their product packaging complied with the regulation, which also introduced a nutrition fact table presenting nutrient information per 100 ml or 100 g of product. Only small producers and non-alcoholic drinks in returnable packaging were granted more time to comply, meaning a general deadline for compliance of October 2023.

However, in October last year, ANVISA issued a new regulation, RDC nº 819/2023, pushing back the deadline to October 2024. In response, IDEC filed a public civil action against ANVISA seeking to restore the original deadline.

Extension based on interference from the food industry, says IDEC

Last month, a São Paolo court decided in favour of IDEC, issuing an injunction that suspended the effects of RDC nº 819/2023. In its public civil action, IDEC argued that ANVISA’s decision was based on biased information from the food industry and was devoid of any independent scientific evidence.

According to ANVISA, the October 2024 extension was necessary so that manufacturers could exhaust their existing labels and packaging stock. However, IDEC pointed out that the regulation already allowed manufacturers to use existing stock by simply adding an updated sticker to the packaging, thus minimising food waste while ensuring consumers had access to easy-to-understand nutritional information.

IDEC criticised the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry for “fail(ing) to organise itself within the 1,000 days they had to adapt to the new nutritional labelling rules to the detriment of the public interest”.

According to the injunction, cited on IDEC’s website, the judge questioned ANVISA’s action, asking: “How can we explain that 57 isolated requests led to the alteration – in a few days – of a public policy destined to cover thousands, perhaps millions, of food manufacturers under RDC nº 429/2020?”

IDEC: Injunction is ‘a very positive response’

Leonardo Pillon, senior lawyer at IDEC's healthy and sustainable food programme, said the judge’s preliminary decision was “a very positive response”. He criticised ANVISA for bowing to the interests of industry, adding that it was extremely damaging to the agency’s reputation.

“There is a double loss of the agency's credibility: internally, by having disregarded the positions of its own technical [remit], and externally by having suppressed social participation,” he said in a statement translated from Portuguese.

According to the IDEC lawyer, the court’s decision consolidated the right of Brazilian consumers to make more informed choices about the potential harmful effects on health of ultra-processed and processed products. Brazil, the largest country in South America, has growing rates of obesity, overweight, and other non-communicable diseases linked to an unhealthy diet.

Asked if it had a response to the court injunction, a spokesperson for ANVISA told Ingredients Network it would present its position in a legal proceeding.