California has exempted dietary supplements from AB 2779, which requires food manufacturers, processors or retailers responsible for the labeling of food items for human consumption to display a date label to use specified uniform terms on the date label, as provided.
According to the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), without that exemption, dietary supplements could have been swept into a labeling system designed for conventional foods—potentially requiring manufacturers to replace or modify established expiration and shelf-life dating with terms such as “BEST if Used by” and “USE by.”
CRN noted that for supplement companies, that could have meant unnecessary label changes and regulatory uncertainty. For consumers, it could have created confusion because supplement expiration dating is used to communicate information about shelf life and ingredient potency, not the food-safety distinctions the California law was designed to address. California’s own Senate Agriculture Committee analysis recognized that supplements use different dating systems and said the exemption would provide manufacturers with regulatory certainty while avoiding consumer confusion.
The underlying California requirements mandate specified terminology for covered foods displaying quality or safety dates and prohibit use of “sell by” or “expires on” in specified circumstances. AB 2779 now makes clear that a “food item for human consumption” does not include a dietary supplement, as defined under federal law.
“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 had been engaged on the issue since consideration of AB 660, California’s original food date-labeling legislation, which was enacted in 2024. Throughout that process, CRN’s discussions with the bill author’s office consistently indicated that dietary supplements were not intended to fall within the legislation’s scope. When uncertainty subsequently emerged over implementation, CRN advocated for AB 2779 to put that understanding explicitly into California law.
The California Senate Agriculture Committee analysis confirms that dietary supplements “were not intended to be included within the scope” of the original legislation’s standardized date-labeling requirements. The analysis further notes that supplement expiration and other dating systems communicate shelf life and ingredient potency under federal requirements and established industry practices.
“This is precisely why CRN maintains an aggressive state advocacy program,” Julia Gustafson, vice president, government relations at CRN, said. “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 pressed for an urgency clause so the clarification would take effect immediately rather than leaving manufacturers in regulatory limbo until 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.”
For more information, visit www.crnusa.org.
