The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India on Saturday said it issued notices to Nestlé India and Hindustan Unilever for misleading claims. It also suspended licences of Sukhdarshan Pharma and Bala Ji Food Products. Many products showed inconsistent labelling, which led the regulator to take these strict enforcement actions.
Suspends licences of Sukhdarshan Pharma and Bala Ji Food Products
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India on Saturday said that it has issued notices to Nestlé India and Hindustan Unilever regarding misleading claims and non-compliances with regards to certain products. It has also suspended licences of Sukhdarshan Pharma and Bala Ji Food Products for serious food safety violations. This comes as recent inspections and audits have led to strict enforcement actions against several major brand manufacturers and local FBOs for misleading claims, non-compliance with labelling regulations, and severe food safety violations.
The food safety regulator said that Nestle India was found marketing and selling "Nescafé Intense Café" Cappuccino flavour, "Nescafé Choco Mocha" and "Nescafé Chilled Latte" on e-commerce platforms with "inconsistent descriptions on the packaging."
The products, manufactured by Schreiber Dynamix Dairies and Lotus Dairy Products were found to be making the declaration of "Flavoured Milk" in the front of the pack while the back of the pack declares, ""Proprietary Food - 1.12 Dairy Based Drink."
It added that the e-commerce listings also described the products as "Coffee Flavoured Milk",resulting in inconsistency between the product label and its advertisements. "
It also noted that the product descriptions on e-commerce platforms were found to contain claims such as "crafted with the goodness of flavoured double toned milk", which are not consistent with the declared composition and category of the product. It added that since the products fall under the category of "Flavoured Milks", the company's declaration as proprietary food was found to be "incorrect." "Such inconsistent labelling, product descriptions and advertisements were found to be in contravention of the applicable provision of the FSS (Advertising and Claims) Regulations, 2018 and FSS (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020," it said.
Misleading claims
In a separate notice issued to Nestle India, the FSSAI has flagged misleading claims on the company's "renal resource vanilla flavour powder." It said that the examination of the product label, ad and product listing on the e-commerce platform revealed non-compliances. It noted that the product is intended for a special medical condition and requires prior approval of the FSSAI, which has not been obtained by the company rendering it non-compliant.
The food safety regulator has also issued two notices to Hindustan Unilever for Horlicks Women's Plus Chocolate Nutrition Drink and Horlicks Mother's Plus Kesar for misleading claims. FSSAI has flagged claims such as "nutrition for strong bones" and "clinically proven to help improve bone strength" as "misleading or non-compliant" with regulations. It noted that use of the term "healthy" in food claims found to be on Horlicks' Women Plus is in contravention with the regulations. Nutritional Information was also not provided in the prescribed form. Also the claim of "100 per cent RDA of Calcium, Vitamin D & K2" was found not to comply with food safety requirements. In the case of Horlicks Mother's Plus Kesar, FSSAI has flagged claims such as "Healthy Birth Weight" on the product label and "For baby's healthy birth weight" in the advertisement as potentially misleading and in contravention of the FSS (Advertising and Claims) Regulations, 2018.
The food safety regulator also said it has suspended the licence of Sukhdarshan Pharma for serious food safety, hygiene and sanitation violations. Meanwhile, the regulator has also suspended the license of Bala Ji Food Products due to serious food safety violation and continued non-compliance with applicable food safety requirements.