Food, in brief

India's Supreme Court asked on Monday why the country's food regulator needs so long to bring in warning labels on packaged food. [1]

Justice J.B. Pardiwala asked why the regulator wanted to "waste so much time" when the court was worried about health, and what it had done in the last four years. [1]

The regulator, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), told the court last week that it needs about four months to finish the rules. [2]

Companies would then get one more year before the warnings become compulsory. [2]

The court said it would soon issue a final order. [1]

The plan puts a red six-sided mark on the front of packs high in salt, sugar or fat. [1] In a filing on 23 September, FSSAI said one high nutrient will be enough to trigger it; its earlier plan needed two. [2]

The All India Food Processors Association, which speaks for dozens of Indian and foreign food companies, filed its objections on 24 September. [1]

It says it is not against warnings, but asks for a colour other than red. [1] It says Indian shoppers already know red as the compulsory mark for food that is not vegetarian. [1]

It also objects to how the limits are applied, such as a warning when added sugar is more than 3% of a solid food's weight. [1] Reuters says that limit is stricter than in many other countries. [1]

It again asked for limits measured on one serving, not on 100 grams, saying Indians eat foods like pickle about 10 grams at a time. [1]

India's packaged-food industry is worth more than $100 billion, and Reuters calls India a top growth market for PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Mondelez and Nestle. [1]

Chile made similar warnings law in 2016. A study in The Lancet found girls exposed to the law for 18 months had a 2.85% lower chance of being overweight, and firms changed many recipes. [3]

Why it matters. Watch the court's final order: whether it keeps the warnings red, and whether it shortens the four months plus a year the regulator asked for. [1][2]

China's commerce ministry published a list on Monday of US farm goods whose tariffs it will cut, including corn, wheat, sorghum, meat, dairy, soymeal and soy oil. [4] Soybeans, the US farm product China imports most, were left off and still pay an extra 10%. [4] Traders say that tax is too high for China's private oilseed mills to absorb. [4] China's state firms have bought more than 12 million tonnes of US soybeans, nearly half the 25 million tonnes a year the US government says China promised. [4]

Why it matters. China has taken about half of all US soybean exports in recent years. [5] A Chinese analyst, Feng Chucheng, says keeping soybean buying on a separate track gives China leverage before the US elections in November. [4]

California's governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a law on 28 September creating a voluntary 'Non-Ultraprocessed Certified' label for packed food. [6] Foods with added dyes, flavour enhancers, sweeteners without sugar or processing aids cannot carry it. [6] The state's public health department will approve outside firms to check products, and each product must be checked again at least every three years. [6] Last year California passed what state officials called the first US legal definition of ultra-processed food, to phase such foods out of schools. [6]

Why it matters. Using the badge is each company's choice, so it will appear only on foods that pass. [6] Non-UPF Verified, a private group that runs its own badge, asked Newsom to veto the law because it ignores how food is processed. [6]

The board of Britain's Food Standards Agency, the body that oversees food safety, has approved the next stage of a plan to change how food is checked in England. [7] Ten national supermarket chains sell more than 97% of the food bought in shops, while more than 99.5% of food businesses are small or medium-sized. [7] So the agency wants a national team to study the biggest firms' own safety records, starting with supermarkets, alongside local council inspectors. [7] Its board will review the detail in March 2027, before a public consultation. [7]

Why it matters. A pilot with big retailers found their own data could show safety risks across a whole company. [7] Chris McGarvey, who once led the agency's legal team, warns that data it holds could be released under freedom-of-information law. [7]

The Trump administration is considering letting more buyers use red-dyed diesel, people familiar with the talks told Reuters. [8] Dyed diesel is normally kept for off-road work such as farming, and it skips the federal tax of 24.4 cents a gallon. [8] It is one alternative to a ban on diesel exports, which Trump says he is weighing 'very seriously'. [8] Alabama, Louisiana and Nebraska have already loosened their own rules on dyed diesel. [8] The US average diesel price is above $6 a gallon. [8]

Why it matters. Farmers already buy untaxed dyed diesel, so the change would mainly help truckers, said Patrick De Haan of GasBuddy, a fuel-price tracker. [8] He does not expect it to add any diesel or cut what drivers pay. [8]

The UN's food agency, FAO, has started a campaign to vaccinate 9.8 million farm animals across all 18 of Sudan's states. [9] It aims to protect 1.2 million families who keep livestock, whose milk also feeds children. [9] Sudan's war, which began in April 2023, destroyed the national laboratory that made up to 35 million animal vaccine doses a year. [9] FAO imported about 23 million doses in 2025, and vaccinated 8.4 million animals between October 2025 and July 2026. [9]

Why it matters. FAO says the war has cost Sudan's herders nearly $3 billion in lost livestock. [9] It has $44.1 million for its Sudan work, against the $193 million it asked for. [9]

Mondelez, the company that owns Cadbury, is turning Harmony, its own scheme for greener wheat farming, into an independent badge. [10][3] Harmony began in 2008 and now covers 1,200 farmers, 18 flour mills and 57,000 hectares of wheat in Europe. [10] The ProTerra Foundation, a non-profit that runs certification schemes, will govern it, and other companies can join. [10] The change comes as a European Union rule takes effect that sets standards for green labels to be run independently. [10]

Why it matters. Other farmers, millers and companies can now use the badge without being tied to Mondelez. [10] FoodNavigator, a food-industry news site, asks whether it could become the common standard for European wheat. [10]

Jersey, a small island between England and France, averaged 20.5C from June to August, against 17.7C over the last 30 years, its weather service says. [11] Apple and cereal growers there say their harvests are down 90% and 50%. [11] La Mare Vineyard picked three or four tonnes of apples instead of the usual 60 or 70, its smallest crop in 50 years. [11] One farm says it watered every crop several times over, buying diesel to run the pumps. [11]

Why it matters. Jersey's government says its farm support fund is fixed, but it may spend it differently. [11] Tim Crowley of La Mare says growers used to plan on 30-year weather averages and now look at five-year ones. [11]

A private Chinese company that presses oilseeds has bought 68,000 tonnes of Australia's new canola crop for March, trade sources told Reuters. [12] Another private buyer's cargo arrived earlier in September. [12] They are the first private purchases since 2020, when China shut out Australian canola over fears of a fungal plant disease. [12] China reopened the trade in mid-2025 through COFCO, a state company, and let private firms back in July. [12]

Why it matters. Canola, also called rapeseed, is pressed into cooking oil and animal feed, and China imports more of it than any other country. [12] Canada, the biggest exporter, is in a trade dispute with China, and Australia is the second-biggest. [12]

The Mixing Bowl, a group that tracks farm and food technology, counted 400 companies making robots for crop farms this year, 25% more than in 2024. [13] About a fifth of the companies it listed before are gone, and more than a third are new. [13] Half are in Europe, and more than 40% of the US firms are in California. [13] Together they have raised about $600 million. [13] Spraying and weeding robots are the most popular with investors. [13]

Why it matters. Big machine makers are buying in: Deere bought GUSS, a maker of self-driving sprayers, in 2025, and Kubota led an investment in Kilter. [13] Better-funded startups are buying smaller ones too, as Bonsai Robotics did with Farm-ng. [13]

A study in Communications Earth & Environment, a journal from the publisher of Nature, looked at 4,193 extreme cold days at 218 sites in China from 1991 to 2012. [14] Extreme cold days became twice as common over two decades, even as the world warmed. [14] The cold cut China's national rice yields by about 5%, mostly while plants were growing and forming grain. [14] The authors project a further 3% loss by 2100, three times what climate models alone suggest. [14]

Why it matters. Research on climate and crops has mostly studied heat, the authors say, so the risk from cold has been underestimated. [14] They offer their method as a test for rice areas elsewhere that face cold. [14]

The UN's food agency, FAO, says in its new State of the World's Forests report that more than 460 million hectares of forest are degraded. [15] More than 10% of all land, 1.56 billion hectares, is degraded, about 53 times the size of Italy. [15] Countries have pledged to restore more than a billion hectares over two decades. [15] FAO says at least 470 million hectares must be under restoration by 2030 to meet global goals. [15]

Why it matters. FAO puts the cost of doing nothing about worn-out land at $878 billion to $6.3 trillion a year. [15] It says restoring land also helps food supplies and rural families. [15]

Forty-nine people living near a chemical factory in Thornton-Cleveleys, in north-west England, volunteered for blood tests, and 70% had raised levels of PFOA. [16] PFOA is a 'forever chemical', one that barely breaks down; the factory, now run by AGC Chemicals, used it until 2012. [16] England's Environment Agency has spent years investigating it in local soil and home-grown food. [16] Residents were advised to stop eating eggs from their own hens and ducks. [16]

Why it matters. Hens scratch in the soil and eat worms, so the chemical can pass into their eggs, one resident said. [16] The UK Health Security Agency does not recommend blood tests, saying they give individuals little clear information. [16]