The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India vide its notification dated 5th April 2022 has clarified that the obligation upon the food business operators (FBOs) to make disclosure with regard to the articles of food being vegetarian or non-vegetarian as stipulated under clause 2.2.2(4) of FSS(Packaging and labelling) Regulation, 2011 is independent of, and not subject to the provisions of sub clause 2.2.2(d) of the said regulation.
As per regulation 2.2.2(d), where an ingredient itself is the product of two or more ingredients, such a compound ingredients shall be declared in the list of ingredients, and shall be accompanied by a list, in brackets, of its ingredients in descending order of weight or volume, as the case may be:
Provided that where a compound ingredient, constitutes less than five percent of the food, the list of ingredients of the compound ingredient, other than food additive, need not to be declared.
The exemption in the above clause is only with regard to declaring the sub-components of compound ingredients in the list of ingredients which are less than 5%.
Therefore, the FBO shall have to declare the non-vegetarian logo in case any individual constituent ingredient of the compound ingredient is of non-vegetarian in origin, irrespective of the percentage of compound ingredient of the food.
