Amid a political row in Tamil Nadu over using the term ‘Dahi’ on packets of curd, the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) on Thursday revised its guidelines and said it has been decided that Food Business Operators (FBOs) may use the term curd along with any prevalent regional common name in brackets on the label.
The FSSAI has notified provisions for omission of the term “curd” from the Standards of Fermented Milk Products vide notification dated 11 January 2023, the FSSAI said in a statement.
‘General Standard for Milk and Milk Products’ under the ‘Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations, 2011’ clearly lay down guidelines for use of dairy term(s)in the nomenclature of dairy products (milk, milk product or a composite milk product) and related prohibitions for such use in non-dairy products, it said.
Accordingly, when the term “curd” was written along with “Dahi” in the said regulation, it was restricting its use for non dairy products, the statement said.
The statement further said as many representations were received recently on omission of the term ”curd, from the Standards of Fermented Milk Products, it has been decided that FBOs may use the term curd along with any other designation (prevalent regional common name) in brackets on the label.”
Accordingly, curd can also be labelled as for example, “Curd (Dahi)” or “Curd (Mosaru)” or “Curd (Zaamut daud)” or “Curd (Thayir)” or “Curd (Perugu)”.
A row erupted after the Tamil Nadu Cooperative Milk Federation known as, Aavin, had said it will use only ‘thayir’ instead of ‘dhahi’.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin had said that this was another move to ‘impose Hindi’ in the state. State minister for cooperatives, SM Nasar said that the state government cooperative will not use the word ‘dhahi’ as directed by the FSSAI and instead would stick on to the local term ‘thayir’ for curd.