The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has issued regulations fixing Total Polar Compounds (TPCs) limit for unused and used edible vegetable oil.
Knownas the Food Safety and Standards (Prohibition and Restrictions on Sales) Third Amendment Regulations, 2020, it states- “Unused or fresh vegetable oil or fat having more than 15% Total Polar Compounds should not be consumed and the Total Polar Compounds in used vegetable oil or fat should not be exceeding 25%.”
The FBOs were requested to be in line with the provisions by 1st Jul., 2021.
It is relevant to mention that the supreme food regulator has been working on this matter and had even published a guidance note for reference in the past. FSSAI has also stated that it has put strong regulatory measures in place under three main pillars: Eat Safe, Eat Health and Eat Sustainably and suggested a limit for TPCs at 25% in cooking oil to eliminate the harmful impacts of reused cooking oil.
Recurrent use of used cooking oil generates hazardous chemicals known as Total Polar Compounds which destabilize the chemical make-up of the edible oil thus making it harmful for cooking. However, it has been observed that in most of the cases, cooking oil is used again and again and even combined with the new oil, which is an unsafe practice, as per a senior official of the vertex food regulator.
The FSSAI had even issued an order banning the mixing of used oil with fresh one from March 2019.
In the meantime, the FSSAI has also explained the procedure to discard the used cooking oil via a guidance note.
Repeatedly cooking in the same oil causes physico-chemical, nutritional, sensory properties of the oil to change leading to the formation of TPCs thus making the oil unsuitable for human use beyond certain limits and causesv arious diseases such as hypertension, atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and liver disease.
The FSSAI has also taken steps such as MoUs with several agencies that would assist in converting the used cooking oil into biodiesel.
Additionally, all FBOs need to keep a record whose consumption of edible oils is exceeding 50 litre daily. The record should include details such as date, name of the oil, quantity of oil used, quantity consumed at the end of the day, quantity disposed at the end of the day, mode and date of discard of used cooking oil (UCO) and UCO collected by (name of authorised agency).