Westlife Foodworld, that operates McDonald’s restaurants in West and South region, on Tuesday said that the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has verified that it uses real cheese in its products. The company said with this development it has decided to retain the term “cheese” in terms of labelling of cheese-containing products on its menu.
“The confirmation from the FSSAI explicitly states that ‘Articles in question contain cheese or cheese product as a part of composition and does not contain analogue in dairy context in any form’,” the company’s statement added.
Saurabh Kalra, MD, McDonald’s India (West & South) told reporters, “FSSAI had given us an improvement notice asking us about the cheese-containing products and we gave them details regarding the quality and quantity of cheese used. They have verified and that verification letter was given to us in the Food Safety Compliance System (FoSCoS) website. So that’s a clean chit we have got from FSSAI.”
The restaurant operator also said that it has received results of tests conducted by an NABL accredited lab that also “confirms the use of 100 per cent real cheese across its products.”
Renaming cheese
The company had earlier renamed some products on its menu in locations in Maharashtra removing the word “cheese” after Maharashtra FDA had alleged that the company used cheese analogues instead of real cheese. The State’s FDA had also suspended the license of an outlet in Ahmednagar late last year but the suspension was later revoked “FSSAI is very categorical that if we are using cheese as an ingredient we need to use the proper noun for cheese in the labelling of these products. Hence, we have retained the term ‘cheese’ in terms of nomenclature of cheese-containing products,” he explained.
Asked if the company saw some business impact due to this incident, Kalra said it is too early to quantify if there has been an impact. “We have always been transparent, whether it’s the calorie count or the ingredient information, and we will keep doubling down on these steps,” he added.
Queries sent to FSSAI on the matter remained unanswered till going to press.