FSSAI Set To Meet Major Quick Commerce Representatives For Expiry Date Violations

Some consumers received a packet of bread, typically having a shelf life of five–seven days, with only a day left before expiration. Similar problems were reported by consumers purchasing other perishable items, according to Taparia.

In doing so, these quick service companies are allegedly violating the Food Safety and Standards Amendment Regulations of 2020 that mandates sellers and platforms to list only food items with a minimum shelf life of 30% or at least 45 days remaining for sale.

The food regulator is also set to meet state food safety commissioners this week and instruct them to increase scrutiny of e-commerce and quick-commerce companies to prevent the sale of near-expiry products. According to officials, they are likely to be advised to conduct surprise on-site checks to ensure that warehouses and dark stores of these online platforms do not have products with less than 30% shelf-life remaining.

The quick delivery giants have also come under the scrutiny of Competition Commission of India and the Central Consumer Protection Authority, which operates under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, for different reasons.

Earlier, the All-India Consumer Products Distributors Federation has also appealed to the ministry to implement stricter regulations to curb such malpractices. They claim that the quick commerce platforms are increasingly being exploited as loopholes by the packaged goods industry to push unsold stocks. "This practice, often disguised by steep discounts, poses a significant risk to consumer rights and threatens the stability of traditional retailers," the federation had said in a statement.

Swiggy Instamart, Zomato’s Blinkit and Zepto are among the companies that do not display best-before dates in their product images or descriptions. In contrast, Flipkart Minutes stands out as the only platform that provides transparency by showing the manufacturing and expiry dates of packaged goods sold on its site.

During a raid at Zomato's Hyperpure warehouse, food safety officials in Telangana found 18kg of button mushrooms being labelled as packed on Oct. 30, while the inspection took place on Oct. 29.

Zomato Chief Executive Officer Deepinder Goyal, however, claimed that these mushrooms with a future date of packing at the company's Hyderabad facility were already identified by the warehouse team and "were rejected during an inward" quality check. "This is not usual and was due to a manual typing error on the vendor's side. Still, the concerned vendor has been delisted from our database," Goyal had posted on X.