On July 1, 2026, California Assembly Bill 660 takes effect. It’s the first law of its kind in the country, and if you sell dietary supplements, it affects you — even if your brand isn’t based in California.
There’s already a fair amount of misinformation moving around about what this law requires. Some of it overstates the obligation. Some of it misses key provisions entirely. So here’s the accurate version, in plain language, from a manufacturer’s chair.
What AB 660 actually does
AB 660 standardizes the date-labeling vocabulary on food and beverage products. The state’s goal is to reduce food waste caused by consumer confusion — there are reportedly more than 50 different date-label phrasings in use across the U.S. today, and shoppers throw away good product because they misread them.
For your purposes as a supplement brand, a few things matter.
It standardizes quality and safety date phrasing. For any product manufactured on or after July 1, 2026, a consumer-facing quality date must be expressed as “BEST if Used by” or “BEST if Used or Frozen by.” A safety date must be expressed as “Use by” or “Use or Freeze by.” On packaging too small to fit the full terms, “BB” and “UB” are the permitted abbreviations.
It bans consumer-facing “Sell By” dates. It also eliminates the long tail of other phrasings brands have used over the years — “Best Before,” “Expires,” “EXP,” and similar. Coded internal date formats meant only for retailer stock rotation are still permitted, as long as they aren’t easily consumer-readable and don’t use the phrase “sell by.”
And dietary supplements are not exempt. The exemptions written into the law are narrow: infant formula, eggs, pasteurized in-shell eggs, and beer and other malt beverages. Supplements are not on that list.
The detail almost every summary misses: it doesn’t matter how the date gets onto the bottle
Here’s the point that most brand owners — and frankly a lot of manufacturers — haven’t thought through.
AB 660 governs a date wherever it appears on the package or the container. That means it covers a date printed into your label artwork, and it equally covers a date inkjet-stamped onto the bottom of a bottle at the time of fill. The method of application does not create an exemption. A stamped date is a date “on the container,” and it is in scope.
So if your bottles currently receive a bare date with no accompanying phrase, or a stamp that reads “EXP 07/2027,” that format is affected by AB 660. A consumer-facing date needs the standardized phrasing, and best practice — reflected in other date-label frameworks — is for an explanatory phrase to sit immediately adjacent to the date itself.
One area where the law is genuinely unsettled
In the interest of being straight with you: there is an open question among legal experts about whether AB 660 actually requires a date to be present at all, or whether it only governs the phrasing when a date is displayed.
The bill’s own advocacy sponsor has stated the law does not require manufacturers to add a date — only that any date shown must follow the approved format. But at least one major law firm reading the statute has interpreted it more broadly, as requiring a quality or safety date on packaged food products. That disagreement is real, and it isn’t yours or ours to resolve. It’s a question for a regulatory attorney. What is not in dispute: if a consumer-facing date appears on your product, on or after July 1, 2026, it has to follow the standardized format.
Why this still matters — and why it’s a manufacturer’s job
It would be easy to read this and conclude it’s a minor issue. That would be a mistake.
Label compliance is not a soft requirement. Under AB 660, violations are misdemeanors, punishable by fines reported at up to $1,000 per violation, and the state can take action against an entity’s licenses or permits. On top of the statutory penalty, a non-compliant label can become the hook for litigation under California’s consumer-protection statutes — the same body of law that drives a great deal of supplement-industry legal exposure. A wrong word, or a missing one, on a date stamp is not cosmetic. It’s a compliance issue with real teeth.
And here’s the part worth sitting with. A change like AB 660 is exactly the kind of thing your contract manufacturer should be tracking, flagging, and managing for you — proactively, before you’ve heard of the bill. Regulatory monitoring is part of what you’re paying a manufacturer for. If the first time you hear about a labeling change is from a competitor, a retailer, or a warning letter, your manufacturer has already failed at part of the job.
Why how your date is applied changes the size of the problem
This is where the stamped-versus-printed distinction becomes more than a technicality.
If your expiration or quality date is designed into your printed label artwork, compliance means a label revision and a reprint cycle — new artwork, new proofs, new print run, and a sell-through of existing label stock. That’s real time and real cost.
If your date is applied as a stamp on the bottle at the time of fill, compliance is a change to the stamp’s message on the coding equipment. Same deadline. A fraction of the work and cost.
At SMP Nutra, we stamp the date directly onto each bottle. That means for the brands we manufacture, AB 660 compliance is a line-side adjustment, not a packaging overhaul. We’re already reviewing date-stamp formats across our clients’ SKUs and updating anything that needs new phrasing ahead of July 1 — folded into normal production, with no fire drill landing on the brand owner’s desk.
What you should do
If you manufacture with SMP Nutra, you don’t need to chase this — we’ll reach out about any SKU that needs an updated stamp format. If you have new label artwork in progress that includes a printed date, send it our way so we can confirm it’s compliant before it goes to print.
If you manufacture somewhere else, ask your manufacturer two questions. First: “What are you doing about AB 660?” Second: “How is the date applied to my product — printed in the label or stamped on the bottle?” The first answer tells you whether they’re paying attention. The second tells you how expensive your compliance is about to be.
And if you’d like a second set of eyes on your current labels and bottle specs, send them over. We’ll tell you exactly what AB 660 requires you to change.
This article is general information for supplement brand owners and is not legal advice. AB 660’s application to a specific product can depend on facts unique to that product, and some provisions of the law remain subject to differing interpretation. Confirm your compliance approach with qualified regulatory counsel.