By Aditya Kalra <\/p>\n
NEW DELHI, Aug 11 (Reuters) – India’s government prohibited a popular Diageo rum for misbranding without following due process and just as the food safety regulator began \u200cconsulting on the labelling rules at the heart of the issue, the company has \u200cargued in court. <\/p>\n
In the biggest such food safety crackdown in years, the Indian regulator shocked the $40 billion industry by banning a \u200bnumber of whisky and rum brands made by Diageo and India’s Inbrew in some states, alleging mislabelling and improper addition of artificial flavours. <\/p>\n
While Diageo has told India’s stock exchanges it has mounted a court challenge, its non-public filing for the first time details its arguments against restrictions placed on “McDowell’s No. 1 \u200cCelebration Matured XXX Rum” made in \u2060Maharashtra, which the company publicly calls one of its top-selling products. <\/p>\n
The Diageo India unit, United Spirits, argued in court the food safety officer who issued the prohibition \u2060was not empowered by law to do so, and bypassed the adjudicatory process by using a food analyst’s report to impose the stop-sale order. <\/p>\n
Further, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) started consulting the \u200bindustry on \u200bregulatory aspects of flavours labelling days after the prohibition \u200border. <\/p>\n
The “continued operation of the prohibition order, \u200cwhile the issues remained under active consideration by the FSSAI itself, was premature, disproportionate and commercially prejudicial,” Diageo said in its August 1 court filing, seen by Reuters on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
The FSSAI and Diageo did not immediately respond to Reuters queries. A government source disagreed with Diageo’s position, and told Reuters the FSSAI was only discussing the matter with the industry at the request of alcohol companies. <\/p>\n
Online \u200ccourt records show the challenge was briefly heard on Monday \u200bin Mumbai’s High Court, but the judge denied any immediate \u200brelief and asked the federal government to \u200brespond by August 19. <\/p>\n
Ingredients on the McDowell’s bottle said it contained artificial \u200cflavour (rum), but FSSAI argued that “flavor of rum should \u200bbe characteristic based on \u200bthe natural ingredients, fermentation processes, and maturation techniques,” according to the regulator’s prohibition order contained in court papers. <\/p>\n
Separately, Indian inspectors last week seized around 18,000 boxes of Diageo liquor bottles \u200bfor allegedly lacking markings to show \u200cthey were made using safe recycled plastic, widening the scrutiny, Reuters reported on Monday. <\/p>\n
Diageo, \u200bwhich has dubbed India its “consumer market of the decade”, has said it complies with \u200bthe law. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Aditya KalraEditing by Keith Weir) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Aditya Kalra NEW DELHI, Aug 11 (Reuters) – India’s government prohibited a popular Diageo rum for misbranding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21250],"tags":[42628,42630,4110,42629,40830,1233],"class_list":["post-101326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-diageo","tag-artificial-flavours","tag-court-filing","tag-diageo","tag-diageo-liquor","tag-fssai","tag-india"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117077067854097959","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}