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Red hexagon is coming to Indian food packs
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Tuesday, 29 September, 2026, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Ashwin Bhadri
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This week, FSSAI told the Supreme Court how it wants India's front-of-pack warnings to work. The proposal is a red hexagon on a white square that names the nutrient of concern. It would appear even if only one of sugar, salt or fat crosses its limit. FSSAI wants four months to finalise the rules, then 365 days for businesses to comply.
Clearer labels help consumers. But the hexagon answers only one question: what is in this product? It does not answer the other: was this product made safely? Whether the raw material was sound, whether the line was cleaned properly and whether storage temperatures held will not appear on the front of any pack. Labelling and food safety are related, but they are separate systems.
Warnings nobody outside the business sees
Before a packet reaches the shelf, a supplier has been selected, raw material received and stored, the product processed, the line cleaned, and the batch tested and released. The consumer sees none of it, and should not have to.
Inside the business, the warnings show up early: A supplier's results drift a little each month. The same hygiene deviation keeps returning. A storage temperature slowly creeps upward. A process holds when everyone is watching and slips when production gets busy. None of these makes the news. Each one is a warning. Weaknesses rarely appear overnight. They build.
When compliance becomes a file
On paper, everything can look complete. The audit is done, the checklist is ticked, the reports are attached and the observations are closed. But food is not produced on paper. On the production floor, the questions change: Why does the same supplier keep appearing in the deviation records? Why are similar complaints logged as separate incidents? Why does a procedure work in theory and fail when production is running late? These questions are not about blame. They show where a process is weakening. Food businesses are busy, so a deviation gets corrected, closed and forgotten. The correction may have been right. The question left unasked is why it happened in the first place.
Testing finds problems. It does not stop them forming
A laboratory result is evidence about one sample at one point in time. Testing is essential, but it is a snapshot. If a finished product fails, the problem has been found late, after the raw material, processing and packaging costs are already spent. If the same business had spotted the pattern two weeks earlier, through a supplier trend, a deviation, an environmental result or a cluster of complaints, that product might never have failed. That is the difference between detecting a problem and preventing it. The data is usually already there. A supplier's numbers move, a deviation repeats, complaints cluster. What is missing is someone putting them side by side before the final test forces the conversation.
Why this is important more now
A single product can pass through several suppliers, manufacturers, warehouses and transporters before it reaches a shopper. Quick commerce has cut the last mile to minutes, but the journey behind the delivery has not shortened. A missed early signal becomes a failed batch, a recall, a regulatory problem, or a complaint that reaches social media before it reaches the quality team.
The label proposal adds another reason. Businesses with a 365-day runway will spend real time and money on new packaging. That is necessary, but a company that relabels well and neglects its supplier and process signals will have a properly labelled product with the same weakness underneath.
Three habits that close the gap
Trend results over time. Read a supplier's results across months and look for direction, not a single pass or fail. Group deviations and complaints by cause, not by incident. Grouping by supplier, line or shift shows where the weakness sits. Record why it happened. After every correction, write down the cause as well as the fix.
Front-of-pack labels will tell consumers what is in their food. Whether it is safe is decided much earlier, in places no label can reach. The strongest food-safety system is the one that notices the warning early enough that the consumer never has to see it.
(The author is founder and CEO at Equinox Labs)
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