The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has notified the specifications of the logo for vegan food packaging that will help consumers identify and differentiate them from non-vegan foods. India's food safety watchdog had last year made it mandatory for all packaged vegan food items to carry the government-approved logo, signifying regulatory compliance.

According to FSSAI, the vegan logo, which is a green-coloured V, should be 10mm long and 7mm wide. The logo comes with a green border and must have an image of a leaf 3.25mm long. The image should be placed at the centre of the V in the logo. The logo should also mention the word ‘vegan’ at the bottom, which should be 7mm long and 2mm in height. The logo should not be of more than 15mm size in length and breadth.

While launching the logo last year, FSSAI had ensured that it resonated with the earlier logo, which was represented with a green dot in the middle of a square. For non-vegetarian products, the FSSAI logo is a brown triangle within a square of the same colour.

According to the government, vegan food is that which is not made of animal origin and in these products at any stage of production and processing no additives, ingredients, enzymes, flavourings, or processing aids of animal origin have not been used.

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The food regulator has also asked manufacturers to ensure that they imbibe good manufacturing practices so that there is no unintended presence of non-vegan substances, Moneycontrol reported.

For those who use the same production line for vegan and non-vegan food, the same should be thoroughly cleaned before the production of vegan products is carried out.

FSSAI had in June listed out the regulations manufacturers will have to comply with for making vegan foods. The food regulator's move comes in the wake of a rise in demand for vegan food in India. The government introduced the draft FSS (Vegan Foods) Regulations 2022 in September last year.

(Edited by : Jerome Anthony)