Mumbai: The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) last month introduced a logo for organic foods which will help customers identify authentic food. A senior official said the logo has been designed specifying the standards of organic farming and dealers cannot sell an organic product without the logo.
‘Jaivik Bharat’ logo has been launched after receiving several complaints about fake organic products going around in the markets. The logo has been jointly developed by the FSSAI in collaboration with the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) and Participatory Guarantee System for India (PGS-India) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.
A senior official said the unified logo is an identity mark to distinguish organic products from non-organic ones, supported with the tag line ‘Jaivik Bharat’ at the bottom, for easy identification.
“FSSAI is promoting organic farming. We already have two bodies — Organic Production (NPOP) and Participatory Guarantee System for India (PGS-India) — that provide a certificate to producers and dealers. But this was done to help customers identify organic products without much trouble,” said VK Panchal, the deputy director of FSSAI.
The logo is made green in colour that has one circle, leaf and a tick mark on it. The circle (O) represents global holistic wellness, the green leaf represents nature, the tick mark represents the product is FSSAI certified as organic and the green colour represents environment and green colour.
According to new rules, “The product shall carry a certification or quality assurance mark in addition to the labelling requirements of one of the systems mentioned in (a) above in addition to the FSSAI logo. All organic foods shall also comply with the packaging and labelling requirements specified under the Food Safety and Standards (Packaging and Labelling) Regulations, 2011.”
According to the rules of FSSAI, to print logo on products dealer needs to submit the certificate to FSSAI to procure the permission. “If anyone wants to sell any organic product, he first needs to procure registration from NPOP and PGS-India,” said official.
