FSSAI launches new logo for vegan food. How does it help...

Are you a vegan and often find it hard locating the right products in the supermarket? Fret not, for the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has made your job easier by introducing a dedicated logo for vegan products.

The logo which was recently shared by Health Minister Mansukh Lal Mandaviya, has been designed by Kruti Manish Rathore, a postgraduate student of Food Science and Nutrition in Bengaluru’s Mount Caramel College.

“@FSSAIIndia launched a logo for vegan foods to help consumers easily identify and differentiate from non-vegan foods. This will empower the people to make informed food choices,” Mandaviya tweeted.

The logo, designed along the lines of those meant for vegetarian products (green dot inside a square) and non-vegetarian products (brown dot inside a square) has a ‘V’ etched inside a square. The V has a small plant on its top while ‘VEGAN’ is written at the bottom.

It will be mandatory for all vegan products to carry the logo on their packaging.

“Earlier, we had logos for vegetarian (green dot) and non-vegetarian foods (brown dot). We have a growing movement towards veganism, so, we have come out with a vegan logo,” ANI quoted FSSAI CEO Arun Singhal as saying during the launch of the logo.

Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) introduces vegan logo for food products

“Earlier, we had logos for veg (green dot) & non-veg foods (brown dot). We have a growing movement towards veganism. So we have come out with a vegan logo,” says FSSAI CEO Arun Singhal pic.twitter.com/P2lW86Mspj

— ANI (@ANI) September 21, 2021

The design of logo has been conceived to make it easier for vegans to identify products. According to FSSAI, the ‘V’ helps in identifying the product as vegan, while the green leaf on its top “depicts that the ingredient/product is of plant origin.” The ‘VEGAN’ written below is meant to “help the customer identify vegan foods and to avoid confusion with the letter ‘V’”.

What is veganism?

Veganism which has emerged as a popular movement worldwide, aims to adopt a lifestyle where individuals shun eating all kinds of animal products and sustain themselves solely on plant-based products, either for ethical, environmental or health reasons.

The term ‘vegan’ was coined in 1994 by a group of vegetarians in England after they broke away from their parent organization – Leicester Vegetarian Society – to form the Vegan Society.

Apart from shunning all kinds of meat, vegans also do not consume milk or dairy products, eggs, honey etc. Present-day vegans also avoid all forms of food, clothing or products that may have been derived by exploiting or by inflicting cruelty on animals. This also includes excluding leather products, cosmetics tested on animals, silk and bone char (used in sugar bleaching) among others.

According to the draft rules of the FSSAI, the food products or ingredients that would be categorised as vegan “will 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.”

Keeping in line with the sentiments and requirements of vegans, many companies have also launched vegan-only products and mock meat or plant-based meat. Some of the brands selling the latter include Imagine Meats, Urban Platter, RAW Pressery, Epigamia, Ahimsa Food and Vegata Gold among others.