Feb 10, 2020
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has begun a nutrient threshold study, as it is in the process of overhauling the labelling regulations for packaged food products and this step is taken to to assess the current market scenario.
The draft regulations propose colour-coded labelling to enable consumers to identify products that are high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) products is in controversy as the industry had called these nutrient thresholds “impractical”, and has raised concerns that if implemented in the current form, would require majority of products to display red-colour coding on their labels.
The red-colour coding display on packages mean if levels of saturated fat, salt and sugar are higher than the prescribed threshold levels. The industry associations in their submission said that stringent thresholds will have an adverse impact on product quality and may lead to loss of consumer preference. In addition, industry associations also raised concerns on the specified thresholds of salt, sugar and fat and requested to contextualise thresholds based on Indian scenario.
And the Ministry of Food Processing has also urged the FSSAI to constitute a working group to review the thresholds.
The Scientific Panel concerned deliberated upon the comments and recommended to constitute a Working Group and to initiate a study to obtain market-validated, category-wise baseline data for reviewing the thresholds. Accordingly, as per the Scientific Panel’s recommendation, the FSSAI has initiated a nutrient threshold study to assess the current Indian market scenario.