Nine headings the law puts on a food package in Kuwait

The label on a packet is not advertising. It is a document required by regulation, with a floor of information below which a product may not legally be sold. Knowing what has to be there is what lets you hand something back at the counter instead of discovering the problem at home.

Who sets the rule

The regulator is the Public Authority for Food and Nutrition, created by law 112 of 2013. Its food control regulation, issued as ministerial resolution 20 of 2017, states in article 8 that a food product must carry a data label conforming to the approved food-labelling standard. That standard is a Gulf one: GSO 9 of 2022, on the labelling of prepackaged foodstuffs.

What cannot be left off

Nine headings are mandatory on every pack:

• The product name, specific rather than generic, describing what the food actually is.
• The full ingredient list, in descending order of weight, unless the product has a single ingredient.
• The nutrition declaration.
• Net contents in metric units, with drained weight where the food is packed in liquid.
• The name and address of the manufacturer or packer.
• Country of origin.
• Production date, expiry date and storage conditions.
• A batch code, which may be dropped if the production date carries day, month and year.
• A statement of irradiation, next to the product name, where the food has been irradiated.

Packs whose largest surface is under ten square centimetres may omit the ingredient list, the batch code and the nutrition panel, provided these appear on the outer carton. Allergen information is never exempt.

The date is where it goes wrong

The standard requires dates to be embossed, raised, printed or stamped in indelible ink on every pack. A separate clause is blunter: additional stickers carrying the production or expiry date are not permitted, there may not be more than one production or expiry date on a single pack, and none of these dates may be crossed out, changed or tampered with.

So the check is simple. Find the date printed on the packaging itself. If it sits on a paper sticker laid over the pack, or there are two of them, or you can see where something has been scraped, the product is in breach.

Not everything needs both dates. Fresh fruit and vegetables, bakery goods normally eaten within twenty-four hours, vinegar in glass, non-iodised table salt, honey, dried pulses, loose tea and whole spices may carry a production, packing or harvest date alone.

Arabic is compulsory

The label and its accompanying information must be in Arabic, and any other language printed alongside must match it. An added Arabic sticker is allowed only if it is a single sticker, hides nothing the regulation requires, contradicts nothing on the original label, and is hard to remove. Kuwait’s own wording is sharper still: the information goes on one sticker that is not easy to remove and is free of scraping and crossing-out.

The nutrition panel

It is mandatory across the Gulf on prepackaged food, exempting items whose values are negligible — herbs and spices, fresh fruit and vegetables, and fresh unseasoned meat, poultry and fish. It must declare energy in kilocalories, protein, available carbohydrate, fat, saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, total sugars and added sugar, expressed per 100g or 100ml, with a per-serving column optional.

If you find a breach

Under article 6 of the regulation, food counts as adulterated where its label contradicts its actual composition, where it is traded with no label at all, or where the labelling is meant to conceal spoilage. Article 33 sets the penalty at a fine of not less than 500 and not more than 1,000 Kuwaiti dinars.

Reports go through the authority’s own food-product reporting service on its website. Have ready a copy of your civil ID, the purchase receipt, a photograph or video of the product, and the address of the shop. The form asks for your name, civil ID number, phone and address, and carries a declaration that no legal dispute exists between you and the party complained of.

For something urgent: the hotline is 1807770, the switchboard 25530601, and the address [email protected]. Official hours run from 7:15am to 2:15pm, Sunday to Thursday, and the headquarters is in Sabah Al-Salem, block 2, street 207, building 82.

Photograph: an entity card made by Kuwait One — the State of Kuwait emblem over a heavily blurred background photograph sourced from Wikimedia Commons under CC0.

Sources: Kuwait food control regulation, ministerial resolution 20 of 2017, on the Public Authority for Food and Nutrition website; Gulf technical regulation GSO 9:2022; standard GSO 2233; and the authority’s reporting and contact pages, checked on 27 September 2026.