New Delhi, April 7 The Delhi High Court on Tuesday ruled that the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has no jurisdiction to regulate animal or cattle feed, holding that such powers fall outside the scope of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.
A division bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia allowed a plea filed by Godrej Agrovet Ltd and struck down Note (c) appended to Regulation 2.5.2 of the Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations.
The Delhi High Court held that the impugned provision, which prohibited feeding meat and bone meal to milk and meat-producing animals and mandated compliance with BIS standards for commercial feed, was "ultra vires" the parent statute.
"Any regulation made by the Food Authority regulating cattle feed or animal feed would travel beyond the scope of the Act, 2006," the CJ Upadhyaya-led Bench said, adding that the parent statute limits FSSAI’s domain strictly to food meant for human consumption.
"The very scheme of the Act is such that the provisions therein can be put to service only to regulate the food for human consumption and not the feed for the use of cattle or animals," it observed.
The Delhi High Court further held that expressions such as "food safety", "primary food", and "unsafe food" under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 cannot be stretched to include cattle feed or animal feed.
"In absence of specific inclusion of any substance as food for animal consumption or cattle feed or feed for animals in the definition clause, in our considered opinion, all the functions of the Food Authority… are in relation to food for human consumption and will not include the animal or cattle feed," the judgment said.
Applying settled principles of delegated legislation, the bench concluded that the FSSAI had exceeded its rule-making powers.
"We have no hesitation to conclude that the impugned Regulations are beyond the purview of the Act, 2006 and, therefore, the same are ultra vires the Act itself,” it ruled.
The bench also struck down directions issued by the FSSAI in 2019, 2020 and 2021 mandating BIS certification for commercial cattle feed, clarifying that such standards are voluntary unless specifically notified by the Central government.
"Making any BIS standard mandatory is the function of the Central Government… and in absence of any such direction… it was not competent for the Food Authority to have made the requirement of BIS standard mandatory," the Delhi High Court said.
"It is not that… BIS standards cannot be made mandatory for commercial feeds, however, for that purpose, appropriate recourse would have to be taken" under the relevant law, it clarified.
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