On 19 August, Thailand published new rules for using methanol as a food processing aid: a chemical that is not supposed to remain in the finished product, which is exactly why most label-compliance checks never look for it

A chemical the finished product is never meant to contain

Thailand's food law works through a base notification that lays out the general criteria for using substances in food, plus a series of amendments that add or adjust specific rules underneath it. The base notification, No. 390 B.E. 2561, was issued in 2018 under the Food Act B.E. 2522 (1979) and covers substances used in food produced for sale, imported for sale, or already on sale in Thailand. Notification No. 472 B.E. 2569, gazetted 19 August 2026, is the second amendment to that framework. Its substantive addition governs processing aids, a category distinct from food additives or ingredients: substances used somewhere in manufacturing, most often as an extraction solvent, that are not intended to have a technological function in the finished food and are removed, evaporated or reduced during processing. Methanol is the specific case the amendment addresses. Thailand has controlled it in this role since Notification No. 259 B.E. 2545 in 2002; the new rule sets out the criteria, conditions and procedures under which a manufacturer can use it, tied to a safety assessment for the specific food and use in question, not a general licence to use the solvent however a process requires.

The real subject: a compliance category that hides upstream of the label

Most food-compliance review, inside a brand and inside a regulator, works from the finished product backward: what's declared on the label, what's detectable in the food, what the ingredient list says. A processing aid is built to fail that test on purpose. Methanol used to extract a botanical flavour or a plant compound is not an ingredient of the finished food in the ordinary sense; under Thai rules, as under most food laws worldwide, a true processing aid does not have to appear in the ingredient declaration at all, precisely because it is not supposed to remain functional in the product a consumer buys. That is what makes Notification 472 worth reading closely rather than filing as a routine additive update. It does not regulate what ends up in the food. It regulates what a manufacturer is allowed to put into the process before the food exists in its final form, and requires that use to rest on a safety assessment specific to that food and that use, before the batch is ever made. A brand that only checks finished-product test results and label declarations against Thai rules can be fully compliant on paper for a product whose manufacturing process never had, and never verified it needed, the underlying processing-aid authorisation this notification now spells out.

Why it matters for brands

The direct exposure sits with flavour houses, botanical and plant-extract producers, and food or beverage ingredient manufacturers that supply or sell into Thailand, since methanol is a common extraction solvent in that industry. For them, Notification 472 means the safety-assessment file needs to exist at the processing-aid level, tied to the specific food and use, and be retrievable on demand, not inferred from the fact that finished-product testing came back clean. For downstream brands, retailers and importers who buy formulated ingredients rather than run the extraction themselves, the risk is less visible but not smaller: a supplier's processing method is typically the one part of a product's compliance file that never appears on a spec sheet, a certificate of analysis, or a label, which means it is also the part most product-compliance workflows are not built to ask a supplier about. Since this addition entered into force the day after it was gazetted, any manufacturer or ingredient supplier already using methanol as a processing aid in a food destined for the Thai market is already operating under the new criteria, whether or not its own paperwork has caught up.

Two ways to read 19 August