The country’s apex consumer commission is in favour of changing the labeling norm of packaged food items and also wants the labeling to be simple for consumers to understand so that they can make an informed choice. To end any confusion in the minds of consumers, chief of the National Consumer Disputes Resolution Commission (NCRDC), has asked the food regulator to see whether the tag of “best before use” on products can be replaced with information on “expiry date”.
While speaking at the consumer awareness day on Tuesday, Food Safety and Standards Regulatory Authority of India (FSSAI) chairman said consumers get influenced by “dazzling” advertisements and rarely look at the labels while buying products except going beyond their expiry date. Even educated consumers do not read the label while purchasing food items. There is no awareness to check contents of the label.
Supporting the need to end confusion on issues to do with labeling, safe and healthy food is a constitutional mandate and there have to be stringent provisions to check food adulteration. Many a times, importers of packaged food items put a new barcode on the imported products.
On the issue of many products mentioning the ‘best before use’ tag, there are many questions like “What does it mean? Is it fit for human consumption after six months? We don’t know. Consumers are confused. What is sacrosanct about Best Before? Why not have only ‘expiry date’ on label?” he asked.
Big companies are now focusing more on rural areas for greater sales and are depending more on advertisements to “exploit” the new market. Government has a huge job to educate the rural consumers. The rural market is flooded with duplicate products often with telltale wrong spellings. We have to have better enforcement mechanism to check such malpractices.
Consumer affairs minister also supported this stating that awareness about consumer rights has to be a mass movement across the country.
