- FSSAI banned Dabur India from selling products with misleading 100 percent claims
- Products affected include honey, cow ghee, oils, apple cider vinegar, and coconut items
- Misleading labels violate FSS (Advertising & Claims) Regulations, 2018, per FSSAI
Food regulator FSSAI has prohibited Dabur India from selling many products such as honey, cow ghee, and edible oils using '100 per cent' claims, saying that such labelling is against the law.
In a social media post on Monday, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) informed that it has issued a prohibition order to Dabur India Ltd over the sales of food products carrying misleading '100 per cent' claims, including honey, apple cider vinegar, virgin coconut oil, sesame oil, cow ghee, coconut water, coconut milk and other such items.
Giving details about the violations, the FSSAI said that "food products being sold on the company's website were found carrying misleading '100 per cent' claims such as '100 per cent Natural', '100 per cent Pure', '100 per cent Purity Guaranteed', '100 per cent Organic' and '100 per cent Tender Coconut Water'." The regulator asserted that the use of the 100 per cent claims is in contravention of the FSS (Advertising & Claims) Regulations, 2018, as they are ambiguous, unverifiable and likely to mislead consumers.
"We have received the FSSAI notice and are in the process of checking the content mentioned in the notice on our website," Dabur India said in a statement.
Dabur Himalayan Organic Apple Cider Vinegar and Dabur Organic Honey were found displaying the Jaivik Bharat Logo without valid FSSAI organic endorsement.
Moreover, the product Dabur Hommade Coconut Milk was marketed with the claim "100 per cent Purity".
Such a claim is not permissible for compound foods under the FSS (Advertising & Claims) Regulations, 2018.
The FSSAI said that it had issued notice to Dabur earlier, directing discontinuation of misleading "100 per cent" claims. However, no satisfactory corrective action was taken by Dabur.
"FSSAI directed Dabur India Limited to immediately prohibit the sale of the food products identified in the notice and all other food products carrying misleading "100%" claims, and to submit an Action Taken Report (ATR) within 15 days," the regulator said.
In the last few months, the FSSAI has been using social media to inform the public at large about its enforcement actions against various food business operators, as well as e-commerce companies selling these products on their online marketplaces.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
