Govt to set minimum quality standard for malted drinks

NEW DELHI, JUNE 9: Pregnant women, growing children and the elderly - the target audience for all those "healthy" malted drinks ...

NEW DELHI, JUNE 9: Pregnant women, growing children and the elderly – the target audience for all those "healthy" malted drinks – can now relax. If they ever had a niggling doubt as to whether those much advertised energy-boosting drinks were any good, the Government has just notified that they had better be.

The Government, in a gazette notification, has proposed amendments to the Prevention of Food Adulteration (PFA) Act, 1955, to introduce certain minimum quality standards for malt-based foods. There are no accepted standards for malted foods in the Codex Alimentarus – the international yardstick for quality standards in food items. However, considering the enormous popularity of malted foods and milk-based beverages in India, the Government has decided to step in and lay down certain standards.

"It was felt necessary to introduce minimum standards for these products in view of the fact that they have wide consumer acceptability, particularly among children, pregnant women and elderly persons," Health Ministry sources said.

Under the proposed parameters, manufacturers will have to ensure that the malt used in malted foods is of a high quality in order to assure the quality of the end products.

Malted foods are described as foods containing malt extracts obtained from controlled germination of cereals or grain legumes. The final malt product can have additions of cereal and legume flours, whole milk or milk powder, flavouring agents, spices, emulsifiers, eggs, egg powder, protein isolates or hydro-isolates, minerals, amino acids and vitamins. It can also contain added sugar and in some cases, cocoa powder. The product is then processed to form powder or granules or flakes by drying or dry mixing the ingredients.

The notification specifies that the grains, legumes and their products used in preparation of malt should be uninfected. Manufacturers, therefore, will have to ensure that the flour and other ingredients are free from insect fragments, rat excreta, fungus-infested grains or any other type of damage. The malted food will also have to conform to standards pertaining to moisture content, total protein, permitted coliform count, yeast and mould count and ensure the absence of e-coli, salmonella and shingella in the malt food.

The notification allows 60 days for comments and objections from the general public before the new standards come into effect.