KS Pannu
Manufacturing, marketing, processing, handling, transportation, distribution and sale of food are serious issues. These directly affect the well-being of people, and thus, the productiveness of a nation. It is important to have proper regulation and continuous monitoring of food. The country’s massive population needs huge quantities of food. Since the emphasis is on quantity, many a time, the quality gets sacrificed. Thankfully due to the Indian habit of eating hot cooked meals, chances of harm caused by sub-standard and spurious food are minimised, though the issue of nutritional value of such food is again a cause of concern.
The lack of sufficient quantity of food or its seasonal or spatial shortage often leads to widening the gap between demand and supply of food resources. Many business operators often resort to filling the gap by indulging in unfair practice of adulterating the food articles with inferior substitutes.
In the price-sensitive Indian market, cheap food products do not invoke suspicion of compromised quality. Unscrupulous traders, often, exploit this sentiment by admixing cheaper and low quality material in food products. Therefore, as in milk trade, black practice of white food flourishes.
Most of the adulterants used in milk products such as maltodextrin, liquid glucose, skimmed powder, starch, etc. are easily available in the market. Some are even allowed by legislation to be used in some other food products. Traders often take advantage of such provisions. When caught, they conveniently pass it as an ingredient of other food items.
The many new ways
Law is strong and evolving. So are the techniques of adulteration. The Prevention of Food Adulteration Act,1954, was repealed, and in August 2011, a new act called The Food Safety and Standardisation Act, 2006, and Rules of 2011 became applicable. This new act had an overriding effect on all other food-related laws such as fruit product order, milk and milk product order, vegetable oil order, etc.
Even this piece of legislation and the rules and regulations made there under are continuously evolving. Food standards for new commodities are being uploaded continually on website of the Food Safety and Standard Authority (FSSAI), an overarching body constituted under the Act.
The FSSAI and state food authorities have been assigned the task of efficient implementation of the Act. These include food making and distribution in the interest of public health, in addition to undertaking the task of creating awareness among the public and training food business operators. These nobel ideas lack financial and human resources. Thus the food safety machinery across states is unable to properly implement these.
However, of late, public safety concerns have been forcing states to match intentions with cogent actions. Whereas legislative measures are evolving to match the public aspirations to ensure safe food supply chain, the people involved in sleazy business are also taking advantage of daily changing technologies to hoodwink the law.
Political will is the key
As in the implementation of any other law, the prerequisite of proper execution of food safety law is also the political will. Since food safety concerns every citizen, including families of political and executive wing of state apparatus. Therefore, with the food safety issues coming to the forefront, thanks to campaigns by conscious citizens, political will, both at the state and national level, is being displayed.
The central sector scheme has been launched by the FSSAI, under which all state food laboratories have been upgraded to meet the new challenges of food testing.
Microbiological laboratory for conducting crucial pathogen analysis is also being setup in all states. The recently introduced mobile food testing vans need further argumentation.
Need to revise standards
To keep pace with the ever-changing food chain ecosystem, we need to continuously revise food standards in the Act. Following few examples will be good:
— The writer is Secretary, Agriculture, and Director, Mission Tandarust Punjab
The documents available with The Tribune reveal that in August, the food-testing laboratory in Kharar received 904 samples of milk products, including ghee, milk and paneer. Of the 364 samples whose test reports were prepared, 322 were found substandard (containing poor quality ingredients) or did not conform to food safety standards.
Test reports at the food safety laboratory found the presence of agents like hydrogen peroxide, detergents, formalin, boric acid, ammonia fertilisers, nitrate fertiliser, urea, sugar, starch, foreign fat, urea carbonate and bicarbonate in the spurious milk and other food products, including fish being sold in Punjab. Here’s understanding these ingredients, which not only give you a bad stomach and viral but can sometimes even cause cancer:
7