CHENNAI/BENGALURU: With a language and political storm building up in the run-up to the Karnataka elections following a fiat to label curd packets by their Hindi term dahi, the national food safety regulator on Thursday did a sharp U-turn and withdrew its order.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) blinked after Chief Minister M K Stalin and other political leaders condemned the order, terming it an attempt to impose Hindi. It said the order has been revised following representations from various quarters.
The dahi directive was issued by the FSSAI on March 10 to the Karnataka Cooperative Milk Producers Federation (KMF), Bengaluru Rural and Ramanagara District Cooperative Milk Producers Societies Union Ltd, Tamil Nadu Cooperative Milk Producers Federation (Aavin) and Hatsun Agro Products Ltd. In its order to Aavin, the FSSAI had asked it to label its curd sachets as dahi (thayir) instead of curd (thayir).
Aavin refused to do so
The March 10 directive had drawn flak from JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy and even TN BJP president Annamalai, who is also his party’s Karnataka election in-charge. The food safety and standards (food products standards and food additives) regulations of 2011 mandate the use of dahi to distinguish between dairy and non-dairy products. “It was mandated to avoid non-dairy products being labelled as curd.
Therefore, milk cooperative federations such as Aavin were asked to include dahi on their curd packets. That order has now been revoked,” explained an official. However, an Aavin official has stated that there was no rationale for using the Hindi term.
Now, ‘Curd ()’ in Hindi or ‘Curd (mosaru) in Kannada, ‘Curd (thayir)’ in Tamil, ‘Curd (perugu)’ in Telugu can be used, the FSSAI said in a statement.