Maharashtra has banned the production and sale of analogue paneer for a year.

The order also bars restaurants, caterers and cloud kitchens from preparing, using and serving analogue paneer.

A gazette order issued by the commissioner of the state’s Food and Drug Administration on July 30 cited public health concerns to impose the ban.

Analogue paneer is a non-dairy or a partially synthetic substitute for paneer. It replaces milk fat and milk solids with cheaper vegetable oils, making the dairy products cheaper.

The food and drug authority cited a 2016 Supreme Court order as having directed the Centre and state governments to implement the 2006 Food Safety and Standards Act more effectively. The court directions have cast a continuing obligation upon the authority to take effective preventive measures against the adulteration of milk and dairy products, it said.

The gazette order said that the food and drug administration’s Central Advisory Committee set up in October had recorded that no quality parameters had been defined for analogue in the context of dairy. In absence of the standards, analogue paneer was “essentially a sub-standard product” that “only increases deliberate adulteration”, it added.

Analogue paneer provides “no nutritional benefits particularly to vegetarians who depend on paneer as a source of protein, and that the choice between analogue and genuine paneer cannot be left to the discretion of the consumer” given the low awareness levels about what it contains, the committee was quoted as having recorded.

The state food administration authority said that more than 35% of the paneer samples tested between April 2025 and March 2026 had failed quality checks because of vegetable fat adulteration. Laboratory tests showed that the sub-standard paneer contained non-fat milk or foreign fat not naturally present in dairy products.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

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