Provisions in Food Safety and Security Act 2025 on defined foods and non-packaged drinking water take effect

18 December 2025

The provisions of the Food Safety and Security Act 2025 (“FSSA”) relating to defined food and the provision of non-packaged drinking water came into operation on 28 November 2025.

Defined food

From 28 November 2025, Parts 5 and 8 of the FSSA make it an offence to supply in Singapore any defined food, to handle food intended for supply in a way that will or is likely to make the food a defined food, or to produce primary produce that is a defined food.

Defined food under the FSSA refers to food that is, or contains:

  • a novel food without pre-market approval;
  • a genetically modified (“GM”) food without pre-market approval; or
  • in any form, an edible insect-like species which is not a catalogued insect-like species.

The Food Safety and Security (FSSA Authorisations - Administration) Regulations 2025 provide for the application process for pre-market approval from the Singapore Food Agency (“SFA”) relating to novel food and GM food, including the information required by SFA to process the application and the application fees.

Edible insect-like species that have not been listed in the Food Safety and Security (Catalogued Insect-like Species) Order 2025 (“Order”) are defined food. For SFA to assess new insect species to be included as an edible insect under the Order, information such as the scientific name of the insect and intended life stage(s) that are meant for human consumption must be submitted.

Provision of non-packaged drinking water

The safety of non-packaged drinking water (“NPDW”) has been regulated under Part 9 of the Environmental Public Health Act 1987 (“EPHA”) since 2019. Part 6 of the FSSA replaces Part 9 of the EPHA and empowers SFA to regulate the quality of NPDW supplied by drinking water producers providing a drinking water service (“DWS”).

A drinking water producer includes any person (an entity or individual) who carries out drinking water production in the course of business, and drinking water service means a service that involves drinking water production and supplying water by means of a reticulation system or in bulk, to any person.

The Food Safety and Security (Non-Packaged Drinking Water) Regulations 2025 (“FSS (NPDW) Regulations”) establishes regulatory requirements on the quality of NPDW and DWS. These include setting specific regulatory standards to determine the wholesomeness of NPDW, providing details on methodology and assessment to ensure drinking water quality, and imposing special regulatory duties on selected providers of DWS who are capable of producing more than four cubic metres of NPDW per day, and are supplying the NPDW. The FSS (NPDW) Regulations also set out offences and penalties for the contravention of regulatory requirements.

Background

The FSSA aims to consolidate and refresh food-related legislation, strengthen Singapore’s food safety regime to better protect consumers and public health, and keep pace with emerging challenges in safeguarding food security. More information is set out in our article “Food Safety and Security Bill passed to consolidate and amend law relating to food safety”.

Related subsidiary legislation

The following subsidiary legislation issued pursuant to the FSSA also came into force on 28 November 2025:

Reference materials

The following materials are available on the Government Gazette website egazette.gov.sg and SFA website www.sfa.gov.sg: