INTRODUCTION
Over the first two weeks of August 2026, a string of prohibition-of-sale orders passed by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) sent visible cracks through one of the country’s most trusted consumer product categories: mass-market Indian liquor. Household names such as Old Monk, McDowell’s No. 1, Bagpiper, Royal Challenge and Antiquity Blue found themselves, in specific variants and from specific factories, pulled off retail shelves.
What actually happened is narrower, and more technical, than either framing suggests. FSSAI has not banned any of these brands. It has invoked its statutory powers under food safety law to stop the sale of products manufactured at particular units after finding, on inspection, that manufacturers were not complying with the standards laid down for how a “rum” or a “whisky” is permitted to acquire its taste. Lets discuss the legal basis for these prohibition orders, where FSSAI gets the power, what the underlying regulations actually require, and where the matter currently stands before the Bombay High Court.
BACKGROUND
Alcoholic beverages fall within FSSAI’s jurisdiction because the definition of “food” under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 is wide enough to include them, notwithstanding that the licensing, distribution and retail sale of liquor otherwise remains a state excise subject. FSSAI’s substantive standards for alcohol are laid down separately in the Food Safety and Standards (Alcoholic Beverages) Regulations, 2018, which came into force in 2019 and prescribe, among other things, how categories like rum, whisky and brandy are meant to acquire their characteristic colour and flavour, principally through ripening of the base spirit in wood, or through the natural character of the base ingredient used (molasses for rum, grain for whisky, grapes for brandy), rather than through the addition of artificial or “nature-identical” flavouring compounds designed to imitate that taste.
Acting on inspection reports and laboratory analysis, FSSAI’s Western Regional Office found that some manufacturing units were producing spirits primarily from neutral or extra-neutral alcohol and then adding external flavouring to recreate the sensory profile of rum or whisky, while continuing to market and label the product as if it were the standard, unflavoured version of that category. A prohibition order was first issued against a unit on 29 June 2026, followed by a conditional prohibition order on 27 July 2026. By early August 2026, the enforcement action had widened to cover ten variants across four manufacturers, namely being: United Spirits Ltd (Diageo India), Mohan Rocky Springwater Breweries (which produces Old Monk at its Khopoli unit), Inbrew Beverages, and Associated Alcohol & Breweries, with brands including Old Monk The Legend, Old Monk Gold Reserve, Old Monk XXX Matured Rum, McDowell’s No. 1 Celebration Matured Rum, Bagpiper Deluxe Whisky, Royal Challenge Whisky and Antiquity Blue Whisky named in the orders. It is worth stressing what the orders do not do: they do not touch every product sold under these brand names across India, only the specific variants manufactured at the named facilities, and imported spirits, beer, wine and country liquor sit entirely outside their scope.
United Spirits Ltd and Mohan Meakin Ltd have since approached the Bombay High Court, arguing that their products conform to the applicable standards, pose no risk to public health, and that the flavouring practices objected to by FSSAI are, in any event, standard across the industry to maintain batch-to-batch consistency. The matter was listed for further hearing on 10 August 2026.
KEY POINTS
- FSSAI derives its authority to act against liquor manufacturers from the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, whose definition of “food” extends to alcoholic beverages; this operates alongside, and separately from, state excise law, which continues to govern licensing and retail sale.
- The power to pass a prohibition order of this kind is traceable to Section 30(2)(a) of the Act, which allows the Commissioner of Food Safety of a state to prohibit, in the interest of public health, the manufacture, storage, distribution or sale of any article of food that contravenes the Act or the regulations made under it.
- Courts have read this power narrowly: the Commissioner must act on objective material, typically a Designated Officer’s inspection or analysis report, establishing that the product actually violates a prescribed standard, rather than on suspicion alone.
- The Food Safety and Standards (Alcoholic Beverages) Regulations, 2018 set out how categories such as rum and whisky are permitted to derive their flavour, and restrict the use of artificial or nature-identical flavours that imitate a spirit’s natural taste without this being disclosed on the label.
- Where such flavouring is used, the Regulations require the product to be labelled as a “flavoured spirit” rather than sold under the standard category name, this is a labelling and standardisation requirement, not a bar on flavoured spirits existing at all.
- FSSAI and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare have both clarified that the action concerns standards-compliance and accurate labelling, not any finding that the liquor in question is spurious, counterfeit, or unsafe to consume.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
The liquor orders have not arrived in isolation. Over 2026, FSSAI has visibly widened its enforcement posture across the food and beverage sector more generally, from directing Dabur India to stop making unqualified “100% Natural” and “100% Pure” claims on honey, ghee and edible oils, to issuing notices to more than a dozen food and beverage companies in June over misleading product descriptions and branding. The liquor action fits this broader pattern of the regulator moving from routine inspection toward more assertive standards enforcement.
FSSAI has also indicated that notices have gone out to six further manufacturers in Maharashtra, suggesting the list of affected products may grow before it shrinks. On the industry side, the stakes are considerable, India’s alcoholic beverages market was valued at roughly USD 148.3 billion in 2025 and is projected to keep growing rapidly, which is part of why an action affecting even a handful of variants at a handful of factories has generated disproportionate coverage. The Bombay High Court’s eventual view on how far Section 30(2)(a) extends, and on whether industry-wide flavouring practices can be stopped this abruptly without a longer compliance window, will likely shape how FSSAI exercises this power going forward, not just in liquor but across other food categories too.
CONCLUSION
Cut through the headlines and this is not really a story about Old Monk or McDowell’s being unsafe to drink, nobody, including FSSAI, is claiming that. It is a story about the gap between how a product is actually made and what its label is allowed to say it is, and about a regulator deciding, for now, that this gap matters enough to justify stopping sale at the factories where it found it. That is a fairly ordinary use of food-safety machinery once you look past the brand names involved. What makes it interesting from a legal standpoint is the tug-of-war it exposes: FSSAI’s claim that Section 30(2)(a) lets it act quickly wherever labelling and standards are not met, against the manufacturers’ claim that a practice used across the industry for decades cannot suddenly be treated as a public-health emergency justifying sale being stopped without deeper engagement first. The Bombay High Court’s answer to that question, due any day now, will say a good deal about how much room FSSAI actually has to move fast in cases like this, and how much process it owes manufacturers before it does.
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WRITTEN BY: GAURAV VIBHU RANJAN
