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Veggies take heart. You need no longer agonise over whether the food you ingest is fully vegetarian or not. All packaged foods that contain any non-vegetarian ingredient will have to carry a distinctive logo.

The Union Health Ministry has amended the Prevention of Food Adulteration (PFA) rules making it mandatory for all packed foods to carry this logo. Health Ministry officials feel that in a predominantly vegetarian country such labelling would help allay people`s doubts as to what they were eating.

Most countries require packaged food manufacturers to label ingredients. India becomes the first country to go in for `non-vegetarian` labelling.

The logo has to be prominently displayed on all food packages and all advertisements will have to carry the symbol. Manufacturers of packaged foods have been given time till November 17th of this year to get their labels in place. The provisions of the PFA will come into effect from November 2000.