New Delhi: The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’s (FSSAI) move Monday to withdraw its advisory instructing all e-commerce food business operators to remove labels referring to protein types like ‘A1’ and ‘A2’ from dairy products was influenced by a letter that a member of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research’s (ICAR) governing body wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ThePrint has learnt. In his letter dated 25 August, Venugopal Badaravada had argued that the FSSAI’s action could jeapordise “consumer choice and the future of our indigenous breeds [of cattle]”. On Tuesday, he wrote another letter to health minister J.
P. Nadda — the FSSAI comes under his ministry — calling for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the advisory and officials of the regulatory body. ThePrint has seen both letters.
The FSSAI had issued its advisory on 21 August, saying that Indian food laws didn’t recognise “any differentiation of milk on the basis of A1 and A2 types” and that the “use of any A2 claims on milk fat products is misleading and not in conformance with the provisions laid down under FSS Act, 2006 and regulations made thereunder”. Experts who spoke to ThePrint last week described companies’ practice of promoting their dairy products as superior on the basis of protein classifications such as A1 and A2—with some charging up to three times more for products marketed as A2—as misleading and devoid of scientific backin.