New Delhi, Apr 9 (PTI) The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed an expert committee to give its recommendations to enable the Centre to amend food safety regulations to deal with warning labels on packaged foods.
A bench comprising Justices J B Pardiwala and R Mahadevan was hearing a PIL of public charitable trust 3S and Our Health Society, filed through lawyer Rajiv Shankar Dvivedi seeking directions to the Centre, states and union territories to implement mandatory front-of-package warning labels (FOPL) on packaged foods.
The plea said it would enable citizens to take informed decisions on food consumption.
The top court took note of a reply filed by the Centre and the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) of proposing an amendment in the regulations on the same issue.
The Centre was stated to have received around 14,000 objections and suggestions from the public and they constituted an expert committee to examine them and recommend changes in the Food and Safety Standards (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020.
“We dispose of this writ petition with the direction to the expert committee to give its recommendations expeditiously within three months,” Justice Pardiwala said.
The plea referred to India’s growing burden of non-communicable diseases and claimed the FOPL would highlight the presence of high levels of sugar, salt, and saturated fats—key contributors to serious health issues such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and certain cancers.
It highlighted the alarming surge in lifestyle diseases across the country and said non-communicable diseases were now responsible for over 6 million deaths annually in the country, with diabetes emerging as a silent epidemic affecting nearly one in four Indians.
The root cause, according to health experts and the petitioner, was the widespread availability and aggressive marketing of ultra-processed foods high in sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats. PTI SJK AMK
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.