UAE Food Label Requirements: GSO 9:2022 for Prepackaged Foods

GSO 9 is the Gulf technical regulation for the labelling of prepackaged foods, and the UAE enforces it as a mandatory national standard (UAE.S 9), currently edition 4 as amended in April 2025. Arabic labelling is not optional: every prepackaged food sold in the UAE must carry Arabic, alone or alongside English, covering the product name, the dates, country of origin, the ingredients and more. Your label is verified twice: during food item registration with the municipality (in Dubai, the Apply to Register and Assess a Food Item service) and again at the border when the consignment is cleared. Health supplements sit on a separate track: they register as consumer products, not food items. See how health supplement registration works.

Prepackaged food sold in the UAE is labelled under GSO 9:2022, the Gulf Technical Regulation «Labeling of prepackaged food stuffs», edition 4, amended by GSO 9:2022/Amd1:2025 approved in April 2025. Its scope covers the labelling of all prepackaged foods offered to the consumer or for catering purposes, and aspects of their presentation. The UAE applies it as a national mandatory technical regulation (UAE.S.9), enforced through the food-control chain: the federal ZAD registration portal launched by MOCCAE with Dubai Municipality, and municipal food departments, in Dubai, the Food Safety Department service «Apply to Register and Assess a Food Item». The ZAD food registration guide covers that chain. The practical consequence: your label is assessed as part of registration, before goods are cleared for the shelf.

UAE implementation guidance is explicit: labels must be in Arabic only or Arabic/English. The following must appear in Arabic, on the packaging or an affixed label: product and brand names, lot numbers, production and expiry dates, country of origin, manufacturer name and address, storage and use instructions, net weight in metric units, the ingredients and additives list (including fats and oils), the barcode, the importer or packer name, warnings, and the nutritional declaration. The barcode and GS1 registration guide explains where that number comes from. One rule catches many importers: production and expiry dates must be printed on the original manufactured label, a sticker carrying the dates does not satisfy the requirement. The shelf life and expiry rules guide lists the accepted date formats per category. Our Arabic labeling guide turns this into a pre-shipment checklist.

Registration runs through the food-control chain rather than a single consumer-products portal: the federal ZAD system, integrated with emirate systems since 2018, and the municipal service, in Dubai, «Apply to Register and Assess a Food Item» through the Food Safety Department. Plan the sequence around your shipment: label assessment should happen before goods enter the UAE, because a non-compliant label discovered at clearance means re-labelling under time pressure while storage or demurrage costs run. Importers who move fastest treat the label as the first filing document, not the last, and route the file through someone who reads both the regulation and the artwork. If that is the help you need, our product registration assistance starts with a document and label review before anything is submitted. For the import side of that track, the food import registration guide follows the consignment end to end.

GSO 9:2022 fixes the mandatory particulars, and UAE guidance decides the language split. Item by item: the product name (specific, not generic, and not misleading), the ingredients list in descending order of weight with additives declared by functional class then name or number, an allergen declaration with the standard's allergen categories emphasised in the list (cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, tree nuts, and sulphites above the set threshold), net quantity in metric units (drained weight where it applies), lot or batch identification, production and expiry dates, storage conditions and instructions for use, country of origin, the manufacturer or packer name and address, and, for imported goods, the UAE importer or distributor details. The nutrition declaration follows the separate Gulf nutrition-labelling standard (GSO 2233). The Arabic-language requirement reaches most of these elements, from the product name through to the nutrition panel, and our Arabic labeling guide turns that list into a pre-shipment checklist you can send to the factory.

Take a spiced nut mix produced for a European buyer and redirected to the UAE. The artwork is English only, so the file fails before anyone reads the ingredients: Arabic must carry the product and brand name, the dates, origin, the ingredients and the importer details. The ingredient list buries milk powder in the coating and peanut in the spice layer without emphasis, which misses the allergen declaration. The factory declares twelve months of shelf life and prints month and year, which is acceptable, but the shipping agent applies expiry stickers at the warehouse to cover a delayed sailing, and stickers invalidate the label outright because the dates must be printed on the original manufactured label. Net weight appears in ounces with grams in small type, origin reads Product of Turkey with no Arabic line, and no UAE importer name or address appears anywhere. Every one of these is a rejection at registration or a hold at the border, and each is cheaper to fix at the artwork stage than in a warehouse next to the aircraft.

Three rules carry most of the date-related pain. First, the two mandatory dates, production and expiry (or best before), must be printed, engraved or embossed on the original package by the manufacturer: an affixed sticker carrying the dates does not satisfy the standard, and inspectors treat it as a non-compliant label. Second, the format follows the shelf-life band: products that keep for less than three months show day, month and year, while products that keep for more than three months may show month and year. Third, remaining shelf life at import is checked at clearance: the food-control authorities apply category-specific thresholds (chilled and frozen goods sit under stricter expectations than ambient shelf-stable stock), so a consignment that leaves the factory with too little of its life intact can be refused at the border even though its label is otherwise perfect. Confirm the threshold for your category with the food-control authority before you ship, and read the storage instructions as part of the date: the stated life assumes the stated storage, and a broken cold chain gives an inspector grounds to hold the consignment.

Registration comes first, and it is a pre-shipment step, not paperwork for the port. In Dubai the service is Apply to Register and Assess a Food Item through the Food Safety Department, running on the municipality system connected to the federal ZAD portal: the label artwork is assessed alongside the technical file (ingredients, certificates per category) and the approved label becomes the reference for what may physically enter the market. At the border, the consignment is logged into the import system and an inspector compares the label on the cartons against the registered artwork and the date rules; mismatches (sticker dates, missing Arabic, artwork that drifted from the approved version) mean relabelling under supervision, re-export or destruction, plus inspection holds on the importer's account. Note where food differs from the rest of the catalogue: consumer products such as cosmetics and supplements run through Montaji on top of an ECAS certificate, while food follows the ZAD and municipal food-control chain. If your file mixes both, our product registration assistance and Montaji product registration services keep the two tracks separate and each one compliant.