The Delhi High Court raised alarms on Tuesday regarding the practice of selling expired food products that are reintroduced into the market through repackaging and rebranding with new expiry dates.

The court emphasized that consumers should not be forced to consume "adulterated" food items. "No one should be permitted to sell expired goods; this cannot be considered a legitimate business," stated the bench, comprising Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela.

They urged for suggestions on how to address this issue while hearing a public interest litigation initiated by the court itself, prompted by multiple reports of expired products being repackaged and sold with misleading expiry dates.

Advocate Shwetasree Mazumdar, who served as amicus curiae in the case, presented her report and recommended the implementation of a QR code system for all packaged food items. This would enable tracking of the original expiry dates of products. She noted that while existing legislation addresses this issue, the penalties for violations are insufficiently deterrent and should be revised to enhance their effectiveness.

"Food business operators be directed to mark all food products with a unique alphanumeric code or a QR code that is identifiable by an FSSAI representative by cross-reference to a centralised database, which will reveal the batch number and expiry date of a product immediately and on site, to obviate testing and sampling to ascertain whether expiry dates and other information on the label has been tampered with," the amicus submitted.