With the festive season driving up demand for dairy products, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has ordered all states and union territories to intensify surveillance on dairy analogues throughout March. The move is part of the regulator’s ongoing campaign against food adulteration and mislabeling.
What Are Dairy Analogues?
Dairy analogues are products that mimic milk or milk-based items in appearance, texture, and function but do not contain real dairy components—or contain them in altered proportions. These substitutes replace milk fats and proteins with vegetable-based alternatives like plant oils or plant-derived proteins. As per FSSAI’s Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations, these products cannot be categorized as milk, milk products, or composite milk products and must be clearly labeled to avoid misleading consumers.
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Festive Season and the Risk of Mislabeling
During festive periods, the demand for dairy-based sweets, ghee, and other milk products surges, increasing the risk of adulteration, substitution, and misleading labeling. To combat this, FSSAI has instructed food safety departments to ramp up testing and label verification on dairy analogues, ensuring manufacturers and retailers do not pass them off as authentic dairy items.
FSSAI’s Broader Food Safety Drive
This crackdown on dairy analogues aligns with FSSAI’s ongoing monthly food surveillance initiative, which targets specific food categories prone to adulteration. The regulator has been conducting product-specific drives to ensure compliance with food safety norms and protect consumers from fraudulent practices.
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State authorities have been directed to conduct rigorous inspections, laboratory tests, and scrutiny of product labels to prevent any misrepresentation. The goal is to ensure that consumers can confidently purchase genuine dairy products without being misled by misleading packaging or altered compositions.
