New Delhi: India’s government prohibited a popular Diageo rum for misbranding without following due \u200cprocess and just as the food safety regulator began consulting on the labelling rules at the heart of the issue, the company has argued in court.<\/p>\n
In the biggest such food safety crackdown in years, the Indian regulator shocked the $40 \u200bbillion industry by banning a number of whisky and rum brands made by Diageo and India’s \u200bInbrew in some states, alleging mislabelling and improper addition of artificial flavours.<\/p>\n
While Diageo \u2060has told India’s stock exchanges it has mounted a court challenge, its non-public filing for the \u200bfirst time details its arguments against restrictions placed on “McDowell’s No. 1 Celebration Matured XXX Rum” made in Maharashtra, which the \u200bcompany 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 was not empowered by law to do so, and bypassed the adjudicatory process by using \u200ba food analyst’s report to impose the stop-sale order.<\/p>\n
Further, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of \u200bIndia (FSSAI) started consulting the industry on regulatory aspects of flavours labelling days after the prohibition order.<\/p>\n
The “continued operation of the prohibition \u200corder, \u2060while 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 \u200bwas only discussing the matter \u200bwith the industry \u2060at the request of alcohol companies.<\/p>\n
Online court records show the challenge was briefly heard on Monday in Mumbai’s High Court, but the judge denied any immediate \u200brelief and asked the federal government to respond by August 19.<\/p>\n
Ingredients on \u200bthe McDowell’s bottle \u2060said it contained artificial flavour (rum), but FSSAI argued that “flavor of rum should be characteristic based on the natural ingredients, fermentation processes, and maturation techniques,” according to the regulator’s prohibition order contained in court papers.<\/p>\n
Separately, Indian \u2060inspectors last \u200bweek seized around 18,000 boxes of Diageo liquor bottles for allegedly \u200blacking markings to show they were made using safe recycled plastic, widening the scrutiny, Reuters reported on Monday.<\/p>\n
Diageo, which has dubbed India \u200bits “consumer market of the decade”, has said it complies with the law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Delhi: India’s government prohibited a popular Diageo rum for misbranding without following due \u200cprocess and just as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21250],"tags":[42647,4110,42648,42643,9229,40830,42644,42646,42649,42645],"class_list":["post-101375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-diageo","tag-artificial-flavour-labelling-dispute","tag-diageo","tag-diageo-india-regulatory-dispute","tag-diageo-mcdowell-rum-ban","tag-food-safety","tag-fssai","tag-fssai-alcohol-labelling-rules","tag-india-food-safety-crackdown","tag-mcdowells-rum","tag-mcdowells-rum-court-challenge"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117077409940343910","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101375","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=101375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}