What each test means, what a passing number looks like, and the one detail that decides whether a certificate is evidence or decoration.
Ghee brands publish certificates as trust signals, knowing almost nobody reads them. A photograph of an official-looking document does the work; the contents are incidental.
Which is a shame, because a real report is genuinely informative — and because knowing what to look for turns a decorative image into something you can actually check. This page is written so that you can audit ours.
Before any of the chemistry, four things decide whether a certificate is evidence at all.
On the batch reference: without it, a report is unfalsifiable. A brand can test one very good batch and publish that certificate for three years. A batch code you can match against the code printed on your own jar is the difference between proof and theatre.
| Line on the report | Passing value | What it measures | What a poor number means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baudouin test | Negative | Detects vanaspati (hydrogenated vegetable fat). A positive result means the product cannot legally be called ghee. | The most important single line. If a report omits it, that omission is the finding. |
| Moisture | Not more than 0.5% | How much water is left after clarifying. | A high figure means the ghee was not properly cooked down. It will not keep as well, and you are paying ghee prices for water. |
| Free fatty acids (as oleic acid) | Not more than 3.0% | Fat breaking down releases free fatty acids, so this is a freshness and handling measure. | A number close to the ceiling is legal but tells you the ghee is old, was stored warm, or was overheated in production. Well-made fresh ghee sits comfortably below it. |
| Butyro-refractometer (BR) at 40°C | About 40.0 to 43.0 | How the fat refracts light, which tracks its fatty-acid composition. | Outside the window means the fat profile is wrong. It is a broad screen — it flags that something is off without identifying what was added. |
| Reichert-Meissl (RM) value | Commonly 28 minimum | Volatile water-soluble fatty acids, mainly butyric acid. Milk fat is rich in these; vegetable oils have almost none. | A low RM value suggests dilution with vegetable fat. Note the minimum varies by state and season — check which limit applies before calling a number a failure. |
| Polenske value | Reported with RM | A companion measure of a different group of volatile fatty acids. | RM and Polenske read together are much harder to fake than either alone. A report giving one and not the other invites a question. |
| Milk fat / total fat | About 99–99.5% | What proportion of the jar is actually fat. | Anything much below this means water or solids were left in, which is a making problem rather than an adulteration one. |
Limits as applied in September 2026. The Reichert-Meissl minimum varies by state and season — see what FSSAI actually requires.
Everything on a published report passes. It would not be published otherwise. So "PASS" in the final column tells you nothing — what tells you something is how comfortably.
Free fatty acids are the clearest example. The legal ceiling is 3.0%. A batch at 2.8% is compliant and a batch at 0.4% is compliant, and they are not remotely the same ghee: the first is old, was stored warm, or was overheated in the making. Same word in the verdict column, very different product.
Do the same with moisture and with Reichert-Meissl. A brand with nothing to hide is being told something flattering by those margins, and a brand scraping the limits is hoping you only read the last column.
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| No batch or sample reference | The single worst omission. A report that cannot be tied to a specific batch proves something about some ghee, somewhere, once. It says nothing about the jar in your hand. |
| No laboratory named at all | Anyone can run a test. A report that does not say which laboratory ran it, with an address or a registration you could look up, is asking to be taken on trust. Accreditation such as NABL is a further mark of competence where a laboratory holds it. |
| No date | A report from an unspecified time is not evidence about current production. |
| Only a photograph, cropped | Certificates are usually cropped to hide the header or the footer. Those are exactly the parts carrying the lab identity, the accreditation and the sample details. |
| Results with no limits beside them | A number on its own is not a pass. A report worth reading states the specification next to the result so you can see the margin. |
| "Sample submitted by the party" | Standard and not sinister — most testing works this way — but it means the brand chose what to send. A sample the laboratory drew itself is stronger evidence, and a brand that does that should say so. |
This is worth being blunt about, because lab reports are routinely used to answer questions they cannot touch.
A report establishes that a product is genuine, unadulterated milk fat meeting the legal definition of ghee. That is real and worth having. It is also the entire scope. Everything else on the label is a sourcing claim, and sourcing claims are verified by asking who, where and how — not by a number.
Find the batch code on your jar. Ask for the analysis for that batch.
A brand that tests every batch can send it in a few minutes. A brand that tested once and has been reusing the certificate will explain why that is not possible. Either way you have learned what you needed, and it cost you one message.
Ours is on WhatsApp at +91 91123 45165, and the reports we publish are at lab reports. Hold us to everything on this page.
At minimum: the laboratory's name, a date, a batch or sample reference you can match to your jar, a negative Baudouin test, Reichert-Meissl and Polenske values, moisture and free fatty acids. Each result should sit next to the specification it is being measured against.
The Baudouin test. It is the standard test for vanaspati — hydrogenated vegetable fat — and a negative result is legally required for anything sold as ghee. If a report does not include it, that absence is itself the finding.
It measures volatile water-soluble fatty acids, mainly butyric acid. Milk fat is unusually rich in these and vegetable oils contain almost none, so a low value suggests dilution with vegetable fat. The legal minimum is commonly 28 but is lower in certain southern states and particular months, because milk's fatty-acid profile changes with what the cattle eat.
Because without it a report is unfalsifiable. A brand can test one excellent batch and publish that certificate for years. A batch reference you can match to the code printed on your own jar is the difference between evidence and decoration.
No. Neither appears on a standard chemical panel. A2 is about the breed of cow and ghee contains very little casein to begin with; bilona is about the method and leaves no signature a routine test detects. Both are supply-chain claims, verifiable only by asking who made it and where.
Yes, and any brand that tests properly can produce one. Find the batch code on your jar and ask for the analysis for that batch. How a brand responds to that question tells you a good deal on its own.