State of Clean Label 2026 is our annual read on where vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, non-GMO and cruelty-free certification is heading — written as a dated snapshot, not an evergreen guide. This first edition points to three shifts manufacturers keep raising with us: patchy fee transparency across programs, a settled US bioengineered-disclosure regime, and India's vegan logo becoming mandatory in 2027.
The durable market context — demand, prevalence, retail scale — lives in our evergreen guide Clean-label trends for manufacturers, 2026, where each figure renders from a dated, sourced fact. This post is the dated companion: the three things that changed, or are about to, this year.
Three shifts we are watching
First, fee transparency is still patchy. Some programs publish a certification fee; many quote privately. We put the published numbers in one dated table — see the Certification Fee Index and the release note — precisely because the gaps are hard to research otherwise.
Second, the US bioengineered-disclosure regime has settled. The USDA's mandatory bioengineered label has been in force since 2022, and it sits alongside — not in place of — a voluntary non-GMO certification a manufacturer chooses to pursue. The two answer different questions, and buyers increasingly ask about both.
Third, regulation is tightening in key export markets. From 1 July 2027 India's FSSAI makes its vegan logo mandatory on approved vegan food packages (FSSAI / USDA FAS, 2026) — the subject of a separate regulatory-watch post. For manufacturers exporting there, a voluntary vegan claim and a regulatory logo become two separate line items.
The through-line for a manufacturer carrying several claims is that certification is getting more specific, not less — more thresholds, more market-by-market rules, more documentation. That is the case for handling related claims together rather than one program at a time.