DAIRY NEWS Cheese will no more be Cheezzy : FSSAI amends regulation on analogues and testing of ghee purity

Fssai has finally notified the draft regulation to amend the FSS 2011 regulations for bringing in more clarity on standards for milk and milk products. Adulteration of ghee and use of dairy terms by the manufacturers of analogues imitating cheese, paneer and other fat rich dairy products became very common at the market place. The marketers were cheating on consumers through mis labeling and getting benefit of doubt due to consumer’s ignorance. Also read Margarine may be banned for the sake of dairy farmer: Gadkari wrote to PM Modi

The food regulator on July 27th notified this amendment under a draft regulation. As per the amendment an analogue in the dairy context means an imitation product that is designed or structured to mimic, or offered as an alternative/replacement to, a milk or milk product or composite milk product as defined in these regulations by partial or full substitution of selected milk components with other components from non-dairy sources, or prepared by using non-dairy ingredient(s) exclusively or in combination with dairy ingredients.” This journey was flagged off first by Sh Pawan Agarwal around two years back while he was CEO of FSSAI. We thank him for his passion to deliver safe milk to everyone.

The nomenclature of an analogue product, defined in sub-item (ba) under item 1 of sub-regulation 2.1.1, as provided on the label shall be reflective of the true nature of the product. Provided also that for such products, dairy term or phonetically similar or spell alike terms shall not be used in the nomenclature of the product. However, the name of the dairy ingredient used in the product shall be indicated in the list of ingredients, wherever applicable. Current CEO of FSSAI Sh Arun Singhal has also shared his concern while selecting milk amongst the top five products for continuous surveillance. Also read Milk quality testing is high in priority list of FSSAI : Arun Singhal CEO FSSAI

“All milk and milk products, including composite milk products, as defined in sub-item b,e,f,h and i of item 1 of this sub-regulation can exclusively use the following logo on the product label.” This would help all the consumers to immediately differentiate milk based dairy products from analogues or imitation products.

The menace of ghee adulteration would also be over after the implementation of the this draft regulation. Apart from other amendments, the regulator has made test for absence of β-sitosterol mandatory in all categories of milk fat/butter oil, anhydrous milk fat and ghee. Regulator has also specified a method of testing β-sitosterol in ghee for the benefit of FBO.The manufacturer will have to get the fatty acid profile of ghee also tested as it is unique to fat derived from milk. Earlier standards and testing methodolgies were insufficient to test the adulteration of edible oils in milk. Also read Rampant adulteration of ghee in Dudhsagar dairy shows the dark shades of ghee business