The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has included ‘mouth fresheners’ as food category in FoSCoS for the purpose of licensing and registration. The food authority has decided to create a sub-category under ‘Confectionary’ for ‘mouth fresheners’ to facilitate the licensing and registration of food businesses for these products.
The food regulator has issued an order in this regard and stated that as an ‘interim measure’, in order to facilitate licensing/registration of these products in a specific category, it was decided to create a new sub-category under the food category ‘5.2 Confectionary’, as ‘mouth fresheners’ with classifications.
The classifications were made for dried fruits/vegetables/nut based mouth fresheners, spice based mouth fresheners and other traditional mouth fresheners.
According to the FSSAI, presently there were no standards for mouth fresheners under the FSS regulations and such products were licensed as proprietary foods under the broad food category number 5.0.
The decision of creating a sub-category was taken after industry representatives had met with the FSSAI officials and made a representation regarding problems faced by them in getting license for such products.
An official with the FSSAI said, “The stakeholders sought clarity for food category and permitted food additive for some traditional mouth fresheners such as dried fruits, vegetables, nut based mouth fresheners, spice based mouth fresheners and other traditional mouth fresheners, so that license can be obtained for these products.”
