Amid an ongoing row over the use of regional names for ‘curd’ on food packets, the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has amended its January 11 order and instead, allowed the use of regional names for ‘dahi’ on printed labels of curd packets.
According to the latest FSSAI guidelines, food business operators – referred to as FBOs – can now use the term curd along with regional names for the same. Thus, regional producers and businesses can sell curd packets with labels – ‘Curd (Dahi)’ or ‘Curd (Mosaru), ‘Curd (Zaamutdaud)’, ‘Curd (Thayir)’, ‘Curd (Perugu)’, the FSSAI said in a statement.
The revised guidelines were issued by FSSAI after a political row erupted in Tamil Nadu where the Tamil Nadu Cooperative Milk Producers Federation refused to comply with the regulator’s January 11 order to use the Hindi term ‘dahi’ on curd sachets. The federation said that it will continue to use the Tamil word ‘Thayir’ on its printed sachets.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin alleged that the FSSAI’s January 11 guidelines were an attempt to ‘impose Hindi’. “The unabashed insistence of #HindiImposition have come to the extent of directing us to label even a curd packet in Hindi, relegating Tamil & Kannada in our own states. Such brazen disregard to our mother tongues will make sure those responsible are banished from South forever (sic),” Stalin said in a tweet.
BJP state unit chief K Annamalai had also claimed that the FSSAI notification was not in line with the Centre’s policy of promoting regional languages.
