@ Vikash Sharma | Sr Journalist
New Delhi: Sattvik Council of India, an organisation committed to providing a vegetarian experience to Indians has partnered up with the Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Cooperation (IRCTC) to provide a vegetarian certification to Indian trains, the first of its kind.
Sattvik Council of India, through a press conference, launched the Sattvik Certification scheme and World’s First and One of its Kind “PL-CAM” (Passenger- Locomotive Continuous Audit Module) with IRCTC at the IRCTC Executive Lounge, Platform No. -16, New Delhi Railway Station today.
Starting with the Vande Bharat train, and eventually 18 others, this certification is mainly targeted to the trains travelling to religious destinations. The certification ensures a truly vegetarian, and by extension, a vegan experience by not just ensuring the food is pure vegetarian, but by also making sure that the utensils and any utility that enters the kitchen has been washed with products that have been certified vegetarian. Often, “veg” food is not truly vegetarian due to multiple factors, so to ensure the purity of the food, there will be no non-veg prepared alongside in the kitchen, which means there will be no mix-ups.
Furthermore, in order to ensure that Vegetarians are comfortable and to promote their cause, the IRCTC and the Sattvik Council of India jointly developed a handbook (operations manual) on all the vegetarian destinations and kitchens in association with its Global Audit Partner – Bureau Veritas.
The Sattvik certification is not just limited to trains, but also to IRCTC base kitchens, executive lounges, budget hotels, food plazas, travel and tour packages, Rail Neer plants and so on in order to ensure “vegetarian friendly travel”.
Mr. Abhishek Biswas, Founder at Sattvik Council of India said, “Vegetarians/ Vegans increasingly represent an influential consumer segment in tourism and is the fastest growing in the global travel industry. Vegetarian food and environment is what they look for while travelling. Therefore, it is essential to develop certified vegetarian food in restaurants and food souvenirs to attract travel in VFT destinations. The journey will now be more attractive & feasible due to the availability of vegetarian food & environment”.
“We are happy for this association with Sattvik Council of India to bring the vegetarian certification forward”, said Mr. Brijesh Singh, General Manager, North Zone, Bureau Veritas.
