Sattvik Council of India, the food safety and regulatory compliance for vegetarian and allied adherents, has launched a one-of-its-kind certification scheme for vegetarian/vegan food products, in association with its Global Audit Partner – Bureau Veritas.
The Sattvik Certification Scheme aims to guarantee food safety for vegetarian and vegan consumers in India and abroad. It will lay down SOPs in all applicable areas having the potential for guaranteed 100% vegetarian environment.
Ensuring food safety
The scheme is targeted at improving the overall performance of the vegetarian and vegan food quality and food safety management systems for the consumers.
The two organisations will also work to ensure safe vegetarian food supply, products and services, while meeting all statutory and regulatory requirements.
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It will reduce the risk of food borne diseases, and initiate awareness around basic food hygiene, which will directly reduce the cost and improve public health.
The scheme will also open the gateway for increased market access while mitigating the business risks; likewise, it will encourage facilitation of international trade. The certificate will help in reduction of production costs through reduced wastage and recall.
Sattvik certifications
As a part of agreement, Bureau Veritas India will offer following types of Certifications:
Sattvik-Sattvam: A food prepared strictly following all the principles of Sattvik concept – i.e., Vegetarian food complying with non-use of all the forbidden ingredients and prepared in a kitchen or a processing facility with prescribed lay out.
Sattvik-Vegetarian: A Food prepared with 100 % vegetarian ingredients, and ensuring free from contamination by non-Vegetarian food (Ex: Eggs, Meat, Fish, etc.) or any ingredients derived from animal slaughter
Sattvik-Vegan: A Sattvik vegetarian food prepared with no use of any animal origin products, milk and its derivatives such as cheese, butter, ghee etc.
Sattvik-Jain: A Sattvik Vegetarian food prepared ensuring non-use of forbidden uneatable as defined in Jain Conduct, such as underground vegetables, roots, fruits & plants such as potatoes, garlic, Onion etc. to prevent injury to any living creature including insects, bacteria, microorganisms & alcohol based beverages
The launch was attended by Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Ex-Chief Minister of Haryana, Santosh Gangwar, Former Union Minister and Member of Parliament, Bareilly.
Abhishek Biswas, founder and Vagish Pathak, Chairman of Sattvik Council of India and Amit Ghosh, Senior VP, CIF South Asia Region and Jagdheesh Manian, Head South Asia Certification Business of Bureau Veritas were also present.
Ghosh of Bureau Veritas added, “This is an effort to formulate a concise set of requirements in the form of a management system standard to be used by organizations in the food value chain, covering all levels of food processors, manufacturers, restaurants, packaged food manufacturers, traders, dealers etc. for implementation of the requirements to be used by Bureau Veritas for evaluation of such organisations for conformance to the requirements and certify them.”
Biswas of Sattvik Council of India said, “Through the scheme we want to practice responsible food processing through reduced emissions and lower Carbon footprint. Likewise, we also want to instill confidence in the quality of food amongst the food suppliers as well as the consumers.”
He added that the body is looking forward to associating with restaurants around the globe for certification specially the vegetarian restaurants and praised the hard work of Sattvik teams and trustees.
