South Africa proposes regulation for edible vegetable oils
South Africa has proposed draft rules for grading, packing and labelling edible vegetable oils sold in retail, USDA reported. The regulation, notified to the WTO, bans vague terms like “lite” or “premium,” sets container and labelling standards, and requires chemical testing for various oils to ensure quality and transparency.
South Africa’s Ministry of Agriculture has proposed a draft regulation on the grading, packing and marking of edible vegetable oils sold domestically, according to a report by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The government had notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) about the draft – published under the Agricultural Product Standards Act, 1990 (Act No. 119 of 1990) – on 27 June, the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) report said.
The draft regulation applies to edible vegetable oils packaged in retail containers and not to edible oil intended for use as an ingredient in manufacturing, according to the 22 July report.
As well as setting out quality requirements for the containers used for packaging edible vegetable oils, the proposed regulation also set out the product labelling standard, stating requirements for labelling vegetable oils for single and blended oils.
These provisions aimed to ensure consistency and transparency in the packaging and labelling of edible vegetable oils intended for retail sales, the USDA said.
The regulation proposed a ban on using terms such as “lite”, “light”, “extra light” and “reduced” on vegetable oil containers and a restriction on the use of adjectives that could not be objectively measured, such as “real”, “premium”, “finest” and “super”.
In addition, the regulation set out chemical testing requirements to verify product composition and quality factors for the following oils: arachis oil, babassu oil, coconut oil, cottonseed oil, grapeseed oil, maize/corn oil, mustard seed oil, olive oil, olive-pomace oil, palm kernel oil, palm kernel olein, palm kernel stearin, palm oil, palm olein, palm stearin, palm super olein, rapeseed oil, rice bran oil, safflowerseed oil, sesame seed oil, soyabean oil and sunflowerseed oil.
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Source : OFI Magzine
