It is a part of FSSAI's draft rules for vegan food products. For the first time, FSSAI has come up with draft rules for such products.

The government of India has outlined vegan foods and has mentioned the compliance requirement.

Just like logos for vegetarian and non-vegetarian foods, vegan foods will have a logo that will be green in colour and the letter ‘V' will help consumers identify a food product as vegan.

“Earlier, we had logos for the vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. People are aware of green dot for vegetarian food and a brown dot for non-vegetarian food. But beyond that, there is a movement for veganism. There are many people who are allergic to milk that's why they want to avoid animal products completely. For them we have the vegan food logo that will help people to make their choice," said Arun Singhal, the chief executive officer of FSSAI.

He added that a key feature of the vegan diet is that the food products do not originate from animals at all. It is a completely plant-based diet.

According to the draft regulations, “vegan foods” means those foods or food ingredients that do not make use of any ingredients, additives and processing aids of animal origin including milk and milk products, fish, poultry, meat, egg or egg products, honey bee or honey products, materials of insect origin like silk, dyes, bone char used in sugar bleaching, among others.

“The food products or ingredients to be called vegan shall not have involved animal testing for evaluating the safety of the final product or ingredient and shall not contain any animal-derived GMOs or products prepared using an animal-derived gene for manufacturing the ingredients or products," it said.

(Courtesy: Agencies)