Patanjali, other food operators don’t need approval from FSSAI

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 18

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) today exposed its own loopholes when it said the instant noodles recently launched by Ramdev-promoted firm Patanjali didn’t have the necessary product approvals. The reality is that there is no regulation under which the apex food regulator can force business operators to seek approvals to manufacture and market proprietary foods such as biscuits, wafers and noodles.

After FSSAI chief Ashish Bahuguna today said Patanjali hadn’t sought product approval for noodles and Patanjali claimed it had all necessary legal approvals, The Tribune investigated the matter to see who was in the wrong. Inquiries revealed there is no existing product-approval regulation of the FSSAI under which a food business operator needs to apply to it.

The FSSAI first introduced product-approval system in 2012 to approve proprietary foods by issuing product-approval advisory that it amended eight times. The last such advisory, dated May 11, 2013, was quashed as “unlawful” by the Bombay High Court in 2014. On September 19 this year, the Supreme Court upheld the high court order that said the FSSAI’s advisory “didn’t have the force of law and was not within the scope of powers conferred on the FSSAI under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.”

This order came on a petition by Vital Nutraceuticals and Indian Drug Manufacturers Association that argued that the FSSAI could not force food operators to seek approvals for products being manufactured and marketed for years unless such a product had a new ingredient that needed testing for safety purposes.

“Since the SC quashed the FSSAI product-approval advisory, there has been a vacuum in the regulatory sector. Who would Patanjali have applied to when there is no such legal regulation in force? That’s the problem,” a government official said.

Under the FSS Act, 2006, and its subsequent Food Products and Food Additives Regulations-2011, standards have been laid down only for 377 food products. FSSAI food regulations directly apply only to these 377 foods. Proprietary foods are not part of this category and are separately defined in Section 22 of the Act as “novel foods or articles of food for which standards have not been specified, but which are not unsafe.” Proprietary foods include noodles whereas pastas are standardised foods.

Pradeep Chakraborty, former FSSAI officer who was at the helm while the May 2013 product-approval advisory was in force, told The Tribune, “The FSSAI began issuing product-approval advisories because there were no regulations on product approval ever. Under this advisory no objection certificate/product approval of proprietary food products started to be given as a requirement for manufacturing licence from states. The last product-approval advisory issued on May 11, 2013, was challenged in the court and quashed. In the absence of product-approval regulations today, proprietary foods can be manufactured and marketed as was the practice before 2012. The FSSAI can, however, test food samples for safety and prosecute operators for violation of contaminants, toxins and residues regulations.”

Chakraborty says Patanjali's claim that it has a manufacturing licence from the state places it on a sound legal footing. "That's all Patanjali and other proprietary food operators need currently. They don’t need to apply to the FSSAI for approvals, there being no approval regulations," he adds.