Packaged food companies will be required to label high fat, sugar and salt content levels on the front side of the package with “red-colour-coding” as per the draft regulations proposed by food regulator FSSAI.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI)said that its new ‘Labelling and Display’ regulations is ready for draftnotification. These regulations will supersede the Food Safety and Standards(Packaging and Labelling) Regulations, 2011.
“The idea behind the new labelling regulations is toenable citizens to know more about the composition of food products, so thatthey can make informed choices,” FSSAI said in a statement.
According to the proposed draft Food Safety and Standards(Labelling and Display) Regulations, the packaged food companies will need todeclare nutritional information such as calories (energy), saturated fat,trans-fat, added sugar and sodium per serve on the front of the pack.
The food companies would have to declare, per servepercentage contribution to RDA (recommended dietary allowance) on the front ofthe pack.
FSSAI said the new regulations also propose to make it”mandatory to display red colour-coding on front-of-the-pack labels onpackaged food products that have high-fat, high-sugar and high-salt contentlevels.”
This requirement would be implemented in phased manner for aperiod of three years.
FSSAI has invited suggestions and objections fromstakeholders within 30 days from the publication of the draft regulations.Several main issues raised by the industry association particularly withfront-of-the-pack labelling would also be considered at the time offinalisation of these regulations.
“In present time, the industry practice is to put manufacturingdate and expiry date at two different places over the pack and it becamedifficult for consumer to see both at a glance. Hence, the new regulationspropose that Date Marking including date of manufacturing and date of expirymust be at one place,” the statement said.
The regulator noted that food labelling serves as a primarylink of communication between the manufacturer and consumer and covers bothfood safety and information of consumer interest. To make the nationallabelling regulations more robust and effective, FSSAI is in the process ofcomprehensive revision of Food Safety and Standards (Packaging and Labelling)Regulations, 2011 with the objective of having three different regulationsdealing separately to packaging, labelling and advertisement & claimsrequirements.
Two regulations namely FSS (Packaging) Regulations and FSS(Advertising and Claims) Regulations have been finalised and notified in theyear 2018.Now the FSSAI has readied ‘Labelling andDisplay’ regulations for draft notification. The other features of newregulations are — mandatory labelling requirements like information relatingto allergens and logo of veg, non-veg food etc for the prepared food as well;new logo for vegetarian food and every package of food material which is notmeant for human consumption shall bear a [X] symbol so as to clearlydistinguish the non-food grade items to food items.