Standards for Food Ingredients

The development of agro-industries resulted in the enactment of first food law known as the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act in 1954 and then specifications have been formulated for a number of foods. Simultaneously, the Indian standards Institution was established in 1947 to assist the industries to raise their standard of quality and these have proved most valuable to the industry and the consumers.

With the increase production of milk in India and diversification in the production of wide variety of dairy products, dairy products manufacturers have started adding a large number of substances, generally in small quantities, to improve the appearance, flavour, texture or storage properties of dairy products. The use of

certain additives in dairy products is controlled by regulations made under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act 1955. Further, as impurities in these substances have been found to be harmful it is necessary to have a strict quality control of these food additives. Therefore, BIS fixed a series of standards to check purity and identification of these substances. These standards also helped in checking purity at the stage of manufacture, for it is extremely difficult to detect the impurity,once these substances have been added to the dairy products.