‘Sattvik’ stamp gains momentum

In December, IRCTC’s Shri

Ramayana Yatra

, a train which follows the Ramayana circuit, became the first ‘vegetarian-sattvik’ certified train in the country. This isn’t just a one-time certificate: on every journey, the railway staff uses an app to audit the pantry and coaches after each stop. Next on the agenda are sattvik hotel rooms in pilgrim spots like Katra, Ayodhya and

Ujjain

as well as certification of plant-based meat products.

While many see this as a pretext for enforcing vegetarianism, businessman Abhishek

Biswas

who has set up the Sattvik

Council

of India says the certification acts as an assurance. “Vegetarians and vegans of the world need to fall back on a logo so that they know it is 100% vegetarian,” Biswas says. The seeds of the idea were sown during his stint in Thailand, where he still has several businesses. “A lot of friends used to travel to Thailand but found it difficult to get vegetarian food,” he says.

The private Delhi-based organisation, which calls itself the world’s ‘only vegetarian food and lifestyle regulatory standards development organisation’, has plans to certify even textiles and cosmetics. It has announced a Sattvik Centre of Excellence at the Institute of Hotel Management, Bhubaneswar to train ‘sattvik-certified auditors’. The Council has entered into a five-year agreement with French company Bureau Veritas to do the auditing and issue annual certificates for its clients.

So what does sattvik-certified mean? The audits include DNA tests to check whether the product has any animal content — milk is allowed but eggs are a no-no. Once certified, these carry a 100% vegetarian logo from the Council. There are nearly 40 categories, including vegetarian, vegan, Ayurvedic and

Jain

. The kitchens also need to follow a strict protocol. Those using vegetarian and animal products together are excluded from certification. There shouldn’t be any wet market 500 to 800m of the kitchen or butchering nearby. The kitchen also needs to be vastu-certified. Biswas claims the certification will prevent incidents of vegetarians being accidentally served meat, citing the example of a recent incident of a vegetarian being served fish on flight. “There can be SOPs, with a dedicated trolley for vegetarians.”

The Council is also working on certifications in Canada and South Africa, both countries with a large Indian diaspora. Biswas also sees a potential clientele in the growing plant-based meat industry. “These products have names like vegetarian chicken burger, and need a sattvik certificate for assurance that it is indeed plant-based meat,” he says.

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) already has labels — green for vegetarian and brown for non-vegetarian food. FSSAI also carries out periodic inspections and audits to check for compliance. “Consumers can track whether the product is vegetarian or non-vegetarian with the help of these symbols,” says Ashwin Bhadri, CEO, Equinox Labs, a FSSAI approved food, water and air testing lab. “Strict actions are implemented if the norms and regulations are violated.”

But Biswas insists that the Council’s scope differs from the FSSAI. “A vegetarian needs an assurance that whatever he’s eating is not contaminated by any non-vegetarian elements and made in a safe vegetarian environment — that is what we ensure,” Biswas says.

This idea of keeping a social distance between vegetarians and non-vegetarians tends to reinforce ideas of pollution, purity and hierarchy rooted in the caste system, points out

Suryakant Waghmore

, sociology professor at IIT Bombay. “The council’s activities are not driven by health concerns but purity-infused ideology of privileged Hindus,” Waghmore says. “This is the politics of institutionalising disgust towards meat eaters who mostly come from castes considered lower/impure.”

These developments come amidst a growing vegetarian and non-vegetarian divide, several instances of meat bans and vegetarianism being imposed. Last year, Bengaluru-based company iD Fresh Food was falsely accused of using animal extracts in its idli and dosa batter in viral social media posts and WhatsApp forwarded messages, which also carried a communal angle and incited one community to stop using its products. The company, whose products already carry FSSAI’s vegetarian logo, later had to issue a clarification that it used only vegetarian ingredients and file an official complaint against this misinformation.

According to the National Health and Family Survey 2015-16, around 80% of men and 70% of women eat either eggs, meat, fish or all of these. “Vegetarian or Sattvik dietary aesthetics cannot be imposed on everyone – they are neither scientific nor compassionate,” Waghmore says.