Bombay HC to decide on FSSAI rum sales ban on Monday

The Bombay high court will decide on Monday whether United Spirits Ltd can continue selling certain rum products after the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) prohibited their sale over the use of rum flavouring.

The alcoholic beverage company that makes McDowell's No.1 Rum argued on Friday that adding rum flavouring to rum has been an industry practice for decades and that the food regulator cannot suddenly stop the sale of products that have been sold for years without finding any health risk.

“These products have been manufactured for over five decades…. Suddenly, they come and tell us that you can add orange flavour, you can add lime flavour, but in rum, you cannot add rum flavour because the only taste should be of the natural thing,” senior counsel Birendra Saraf, representing United Spirits, said.

A division bench of the Bombay high court, headed by Acting Chief Justice Ravindra V. Ghuge and Justice Gautam A. Ankhad, clubbed the matter with a separate petition filed by Mohan Rocky Springwater Breweries Pvt. Ltd, the maker of Old Monk Rum, which is also challenging the ban. The bench will hear both petitions on Monday.

The FSSAI has objected to products being labelled as rum when manufacturers add rum flavouring. It has also questioned claims such as “matured in cask”, arguing that products containing added rum flavouring should be labelled accordingly.

The FSSAI counsel said the regulator is willing to withdraw the ban if manufacturers change the label from “rum” to a description such as “rum-flavoured spirit”, “spirit flavoured with rum”, or another name that clearly conveys the nature of the product to consumers.

Saraf replied that changing the label is an immense task, as the new label must be approved by the excise department, a lengthy process.

The controversy

FSSAI's laboratory tests found the presence of external artificial or nature-identical flavouring substances that, according to the regulator, masked the products' natural characteristics.

Based on these findings, it prohibited the sale of specific variants of McDowell's No. 1 Rum, Antiquity Blue Whisky and Royal Challenge Whisky manufactured by United Spirits; select Old Monk rum variants made by Mohan Rocky Springwater Breweries; and Bagpiper Deluxe Whisky and Old Cask Deluxe XXX Rum produced by Inbrew Beverages.

It also inspected Mandexi Distilleries & Breweries in Goa and issued notices to six other manufacturers in Maharashtra.

The regulator cited the Food Safety and Standards (Alcoholic Beverages) Regulations, 2018, which require standardized alcoholic beverages such as rum and whisky to possess their characteristic taste and aroma. It argued that adding “rum flavour” to rum or “whisky flavour” to whisky misrepresents these standardized products.

It also said its labelling rules require the true nature of the product to be disclosed on the front of the pack.

FSSAI further termed certain age-related claims misleading, including Old Monk XXX Matured Rum's “7 years old blended” label. It said matured rum spirit accounted for less than 5% of the blend, while the remainder comprised neutral spirit. Under the regulations, the age statement of a blended spirit must correspond to the youngest spirit in the blend.