With this, FSSAI will lay down the maximum permissible percentage in all alcoholic beverages like wine, beer, vodka, whisky and mandate safety standards for consumers under FSSA. Currently some of the liqour manufacturing companies are voluntarily printing the alcoholic percentage on the labels.
“The draft standards are yet to be finalised. It will happen after a meeting with various beverage bodies and National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) scheduled to be held on July 1, 2012,” an official from FSSAI informed F&B News.
The official said that so far there was no benchmarking in place for prescribed safe and permissible limits of alcohol content in branded drinks and that the FSSAI Scientific Committee would approve the final draft in this regard in the forthcoming meeting.
He added that it also be put in the public domain inviting objections and suggestions thereafter adding that the current alcohol content was only applicable to toddy which was said to be 5 per cent maximum and that of beer (strong) was said to be 8 per cent and light was said to be 5 per cent.
However, Pramodh Krishna, CEO, Confederation of Indian Alcoholic Drinks, stressed that there were stringent laws existing as the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) had mentioned the permissible safe limits in alcoholic beverages in detail.
In tune with Krishna’s claim, some manufacturers of alcoholic drinks have moved the Bombay High Court challenging the FSSAI move and the industry was also stiffly resisting the move by the apex food regulator, while opting for self-control.
“Belonging to the wine industry, we are going to put forward our opinion, which is against the FSSAI's move,” stated Jagdish Holkar, chairman, Indian Grape Processing Board (IGPB), who also represents leading wine associations. He added that the association was looking forward to set up a separate wine legislation keeping the interests of the government in view.
He observed that there were already many existing laws for alcohol and that the Board was keen to regulate and look into different terroir of wine, in order to provide consumers a genuine product. He pointed out that the beauty of wine was in the fact that the wine produced in different terroir gave different taste. Hence, he added, the norms should be set after understanding the different geographical conditions and other aspects of wine so that it created its own identity.
