New Delhi, April 7 – The Delhi High Court ruled on Tuesday that the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) does not have the jurisdiction to regulate animal or cattle feed, stating 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 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 extend beyond the scope of the Act, 2006," the CJ Upadhyaya-led bench said, adding that the parent statute strictly limits the FSSAI's domain to food intended for human consumption.
"The very scheme of the Act is such that the provisions therein can only be used to regulate food for human consumption and not the feed for the use of cattle or animals," it observed.
The Delhi High Court further held that terms such as "food safety", "primary food", and "unsafe food" under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, cannot be extended to include cattle feed or animal feed.
"In the absence of a 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 related to food for human consumption and will not include the animal or cattle feed," the judgment stated.
Applying established principles of delegated legislation, the bench concluded that the FSSAI had exceeded its rule-making powers.
"We have no hesitation in concluding that the impugned Regulations are beyond the purview of the Act, 2006, and, therefore, they 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 the absence of such a direction, it was not competent for the Food Authority to have made the 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.