MUMBAI: A case against Britannia Dairy Pvt Ltd over cheese cubes reported to be infested with fungus has been quashed by the Bombay high court after it found that food safety authorities issued notice to the company nearly six months after the product’s shelf life had ended, leaving it unable to exercise its statutory right to seek a referral laboratory test.
A single-judge bench of Justice Ranjitsinha Raja Bhonsale observed that the delay in issuing notice, the non-supply of the laboratory testing report, the consequent deprivation of the applicant’s statutory right to have the food sample tested by a referral laboratory and to file an appeal render the continuation of the proceedings entirely untenable.
“Allowing the criminal proceedings to continue in their present form would amount to a clear abuse of the process of the Court”, it held.
Since the notice to Britannia was issued after the product had expired, the bench held that the company had lost its statutory opportunity to seek analysis of the sample by a referral laboratory. The court, however, held that a marketer named on a food product’s label is entitled to receive notice when a sample is collected and proposed to be sent for analysis. The court also found that the non-supply of the analyst’s report denied the company its right of preferring an appeal.
The company moved the high court after a magistrate court in July 2014 issued process against it based on the food safety officer’s complaint. The proceedings remained pending since 2018.
IHolding that the food safety officer had “clearly failed to comply with the statutory provisions of the FSS Act”, the court quashed the criminal proceedings against Britannia Dairy.
