FSSAI Is Redefining What Counts as Food Packaging. NIAS Is the Word to Learn.
By Navneet, Chief Regulatory Expert at Regbite
On 26 February 2026, FSSAI published a draft amendment to the Food Safety and Standards (Packaging) Regulations, 2018. The 60-day consultation closed on 10 May 2026.
This is a draft. It has not been notified, the text can change, and there is no compliance date. I am writing about it anyway because the definitions it introduces show clearly where packaging regulation in India is heading — and because packaging lead times are long enough that waiting for notification is the expensive option.
The new vocabulary
The draft introduces formal definitions for several terms that have been used loosely in the Indian market for years:
- Food contact material and food grade contact material
- Food packaging
- Modified atmosphere packaging
- Aseptic packaging
- Non-intentionally added substances (NIAS)
The last is the one to pay attention to.
What NIAS means, and why it is harder than it sounds
Non-intentionally added substances are exactly what the name says: things that end up in your product from the packaging without anyone deciding to put them there. Reaction by-products, breakdown products from the polymer, residues from printing inks or adhesives, contaminants carried in from the raw material.
The difficulty is structural. You cannot check NIAS against your own recipe, because by definition they are not in it. Establishing what migrates out of a given packaging material into a given product under given storage conditions is a question for your packaging supplier — and most supplement brands in India have never asked it.
If this draft is notified in anything like its current form, “we buy food-grade bottles from a reputable supplier” stops being a sufficient answer. You will need something on paper from that supplier.
On recycled plastic
Worth knowing alongside this: under the Packaging First Amendment Regulations, 2025 (published 28 March 2025), recycled PET is the only recycled plastic permitted for food contact, subject to the conditions FSSAI has notified. If a supplier offers you recycled packaging in any other polymer for a food product, that is a conversation to stop and check.
What to do while it is still a draft
- Ask each packaging supplier what they can document. Food-grade certification, migration testing, and whether they hold any NIAS assessment at all. The answer tells you how exposed you are, and it costs you an email.
- Find out what your bottles and blisters are actually made of. A surprising number of brands cannot answer this without calling their supplier — which is itself the finding.
- Check any recycled-content packaging against the rPET-only position.
- Do not redesign packaging yet. The text can change. Gathering documentation is useful whatever the final wording; retooling to a draft is not.
We track this file in Regbite and will move it from “draft” to a scored rule the moment it is notified, so your portfolio is re-checked automatically rather than you finding out from a LinkedIn post. Until then the honest status is: watch it, document your supply chain, do not spend money on artwork.
Status as at August 2026: the packaging amendment remains a draft and has not been notified. General guidance, not legal advice.