Supreme Court demands clear timeline for FSSAI’s food warning labels

The FSSAI outlined its plan in an affidavit filed in response to a plea by a Kerala-based non-profit organisation, 3S and Our Health Society, seeking mandatory, clear, and interpretive warning labels in front of packaged food items.

The Authority had said that the two-phase plan is “to facilitate consumer acceptability and provide industry adequate time for reformulation”.

But the bench, while expressing concern on the absence of a timeline, said that “assessment of consumer acceptability or giving the industry adequate time for reformulation cannot be reason enough for this uncertainty in time. Therefore, a reasonable, scientifically justified and clearly defined timeline or transitionary period which divides the two phases must be indicated, for the approach of the FSSAI to be a workable one.”

The Supreme Court, in its September 10 order, also sought to know “what kind of specific sweetened beverages are sought to be targeted under Phase I” and said that “if a different threshold limit would dictate their labelling, the FSSAI would have to indicate the same”.

Addresses font size

As per the proposal, the font size of the FoPL would be one point larger than the font used for the nutritional information table at the back of the pack, but the petitioner society contended that this is too small.

Apparently agreeing, the SC said it would like to know whether FSSAI “intends to fix the size of the logo relative to the area of the front of the package or make it standardised.”

It asked the expert committee of the Authority to deliberate on the petitioner’s suggestion that the font size “must ideally be specified in relative terms to the overall size of the package itself and that countries have used labels which occupy 15-20% area in relation to the principal area of the package.”

The court noted that FSSAI seems to have adopted a strictly word-based warning label — one that denotes in words whether the product is high in fat, sugar and/or salt and said “this word-heavy FoPL presupposes a certain level of comprehension, literacy, and reading capability across all states, regions, vernaculars, age groups, literacy levels, etc., of the consuming population.”

The bench added that “ideally, an all-inclusive FoPL which effectively caters to the diverse population of this country should incorporate a combination of words along with pictorial representations of the individual nutrients-of-concern. This would ensure that the information provided in the FoPL is truly accessible.”

The court said that “the normal conditions of purchase and use in India are themselves difficult to fit into a single, homogenous box and must therefore not be addressed through a blanket approach. Moreover, the mode of purchasing food products, in general, is going digital. Therefore, such trends in the realities of Indian consumption must also be taken into consideration and reflected in design choices made for FoPLs.”

Noting that “children are under acute risk of developing unhealthy eating behaviours”, the Supreme Court also asked the Centre how nutritional literacy would be incorporated into school education. It asked how schools plan to address the issue through curricula, initiatives and workshops, including how students should interpret information on packaged food items, nutritional information and Front-of-Package Labelling (FoPL), as well as other aspects of nutritional literacy.

The court will hear the matter next on September 10.