BIS to ask hair oil firms to label contents

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is issuing a notification to hair oil makers to clearly mention in their product label the percentage wise listing of contents.

A senior Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) official said: "The Maharashtra FDA has represented to the BIS and the Centre that many hair oils being marketed as coconut oils were essentially a mixture of vegetable and mineral oils, with even less than 2 per cent of the product being coconut oil. This effectively is misleading and the BIS has agreed with the stand taken by the FDA (Maharashtra)."

He added that the BIS has intimated to the FDA that the gazette notification making amendments to existing laws will be released within a month or two.

The hair oil products will also be required to list in a descending order the various oils present in the product with their percentages.

"Similarly, no name or abbreviation or such device that is misleading to the consumer such as saying the product is an enriched oil, or pure coconut oil (when it is actually a mixture of vegetable and mineral oil) will be permitted. Even where such adjectives may be permitted to be used its font size on the label should be smaller than the name of the product the notification will specify," the official said.

The notification also seeks to restrict the product size of hair oils to one litre or one kg packaging so as to prevent any possibility of vegetable oil-based hair oil products going into the edible oil segment and being used for consumption inadvertently, he added.

A spokesperson from Dabur India, manufacturers of Vatika hair oil said, "We would not like to comment on this at this stage".

Marico and Hindustan Lever, which are also into the hair oil business, were unavailable for comment. Marico markets the Parachute brand of hair oil, while HLL has brands such as Cococare and Nihar.