The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has issued a notice for operationalisation of certain provisions of draft Food Safety and Standards (Alcoholic Beverages) Amendment Regulations, 2020, and FSS (Food Product Standards and Additives) Amendment Regulations, 2020.
These regulations are related to alcohol-free beer and use of certain food colours in distilled spirituous beverages.
The order says that the draft regulations are in the process of being notified and the process of draft notification, consideration of comments, if any that may be received thereon and the finalisation of these regulations is likely to take some time, so it has been decided to operationalise the provisions related to alcohol-free beer and use of certain food colours in distilled spirituous beverages with immediate effect.
“Keeping in mind the technical need of certain provisions available in the draft regulations with respect to alcohol-free beer and use of certain food colours in distilled spirituous beverages, it has been decided to operationalise these regulations with immediate effect,” says the order.
According to the draft regulations for alcoholic beverages, in Part 4 in Regulations 4.1 related to ‘Beer’ in para 2 after clause ii), clause iii) is added as – “Alcohol-free beer-abv 0.0 (for other parameters alcohol-free beer shall comply with the limits specified for regular beer)”.
While in the draft regulations for food products and food additives, new entries were added in food category related to distilled spirituous beverages namely tartrazine, carmoisine, brilliant blue FCF, sunset yellow FCF and Ponceau 4R with limits max level 100mg/l for all.
FSSAI’s note however says that these colours are permitted to be used in 14.2.6 distilled spirituous beverages at 100mg/l maximum singly or in combination. These colours are not permitted for use in country liquors as defined under Regulations 2.2 of the FSS (Alcoholic Beverages) Regulations, 2018.
