New Delhi: India’s food regulator has proposed to prohibit manufacturing and sale of analogue paneer across the country, notifying draft amendments for consultations.
According to the FSSAI draft, “the amendment is proposed in the following regulation to restrict manufacturing and sale of analogue product as paneer so as to prevent misleading consumers regarding the nature and composition of the product”.
Products already licensed or registered under ‘Analogue in Dairy Context’ category shall discontinue the use of the term “Paneer” in their nomenclature, labelling or marketing. It added.
Several state governments have banned the sale and manufacturing of analogue paneer.
FSSAI has decided to introduce draft amendments in the Food Safety and Standards (Prohibition and Restrictions on Sales) regulations.
The draft regulations “shall be taken into consideration after the expiry of a period of sixty days from the date on which copies of the Official Gazette in which this notification is published are made available to the public”.
The food regulator has taken regulatory action against several food businesses after inspections found food safety violations and non-compliance. The regulator suspended licences and issued prohibition orders relating to non-compliant ghee products and adulteration concerns.
The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration recently banned the production, distribution and sale of artificial ‘analogue’ paneer for one year, citing public health concerns. The action followed laboratory findings in which more than 35 per cent of recent paneer samples tested in the state failed quality tests due to vegetable-fat adulteration.
The Gujarat government also announced a statewide ban on the manufacture, storage, transportation, distribution, and sale of non-standard analogue paneer, cheese, and butter, citing concerns over consumer deception, food safety, and the protection of the state’s dairy sector.
Products made from vegetable oil and other non-dairy ingredients were being presented as paneer, misleading consumers, harming genuine dairy producers and raising serious food safety concerns.
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