Chile has common labeling requirements for imported products. Among the most important requirements for U.S. exporters is that labeling must be in Spanish and measurements must be in the metric system. In addition, consumer products must display the country of origin before being sold in Chile. Packaged goods must be marked to show the quality, purity, ingredients or mixtures, and the net weight or measure of the contents. There are also specific requirements for canned food, shoes, foods, electric machinery, liquid and compressed natural gas equipment (LNG and CNG), plastics, wines and alcoholic beverages, textiles and apparel, wheat flour, detergents, and insecticides for agricultural use.

Canned or packaged foodstuffs imported into Chile must bear labels in Spanish for all ingredients, including additives, manufacturing and expiration dates of the products, and the name of the producer or importer. All sizes and weights of the net contents also must be converted to the metric system. Goods not complying with these requirements may be imported but not sold to consumers until conversion is made. Thus, foodstuffs labeled in English must be re-labeled in Chile before they can be sold. For information on Chile’s labeling requirements for food, see the U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service’s Food and Agricultural Import Regulations.

In 2016, the Ministry of Health began enforcing Law 20606, which regulates the labeling of the nutritional compositions of food products. Decree 13, published in 2015 by the Ministry of Health, is the implementing regulation for the law and aims at targeting food products that are intended for consumption by children under 14 years of age if they exceed specified limits of sodium, sugar, energy (calories) and saturated fats, as indicated in the following table below.

Food products that exceed the defined limits are required to be labelled with black stop signs with the words “High in salt, sugar, energy or saturated fat,” according to its nutritional composition. One stop sign must be used for each of the critical nutrients in excess of the specified limit. Therefore, in some products, up to four stop signs may be required for a single product.

The regulation also states that products bearing one or more stop signs must adhere to the following:

• The product shall not be sold, marketed, promoted, or advertised within establishments of preschool, primary, or secondary education.

• The product shall not be advertised in media or means of communication that target children under 14 years of age, such as posters, printed materials, point of sale or textbooks, nor in television, radio, internet, magazines, nor in advertising space during or close to the latter, when at least 20 percent of the target audience includes children under 14 years of age.

• The product shall not be given freely to children under 14 years of age, nor can they use commercial ploys targeting the public, such us toys, accessories, stickers, or other similar incentives.

There are a few products that are exempt from this regulation, those products are:

• Food products that do have added sugar, sodium, or saturated fat.
• Foods that are sold in bulk, portioned, fractioned, or prepared at the request of the public, although these are packaged at the time of the sale.
• Foods for special dietary uses, such as infant formula, commercial preparations for baby food, and foods for medical uses or for weight control.
• Dietary supplements and food for athletes.
• Foods and prepared dishes that are packaged to be sold in portions.