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A shout-out to food safety

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.

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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 The Prevention of Food Adulteration Act,1954, was repealed, and in August 2011, a new act called The Food Safety and Standardisation Act, 2006, and Rules of 2011 became applicable.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: 

  • Admixture of milk fat with vegetable oils is being frequently sold as “Proprietary Food” as the act, and the rules made there under bar only the mixing of butter and ghee with vegetable oils but omit milk fat. Taking advantage of this lapse, many sell vegetable oil as ghee by way of misbranding it after adding some quantity of milk fat. 
  • Standards for loose and open sale of fruit juices, ice, water, meat and fish have also not been prescribed as yet.
  • Standards for ghee are very old. These were framed when animals were fed on cottonseed cake. Now the practice of feeding has changed. Hence, there should be two to three standards in place of 42 different standards, which open windows for adulteration of pure ghee.
  • Many food articles have only maximum limits and many have only minimum limits e.g. iodised salt has minimum 15 PPM iodine limit, but there is no control over the excess iodine addition, which may be injurious to health.
  • Vanaspati and other hydrogenated fats with added flavours are being sold as substitute for desi ghee with trade names such as mild fat, premium fat, cooking medium. These require clarity.
  • Similarly, definitions of Substandard Food and Unsafe Food in the Act need to be clear.

— The writer is Secretary, Agriculture, and Director, Mission Tandarust Punjab


Who cares for quality

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.

  • The total recoveries included 2,200 quintals of paneer, 600 quintals of khoya, 200 quintals of curd, 500 quintals of ghee and 2,000 quintals of skimmed milk. Majority of these products, which were confiscated, were found unfit for human consumption.

Testing times

  • Mandeep Singh Sidhu, SSP Patiala, who unearthed one of the biggest spurious manufacturing industries, explains, “These factories used about 1,000 litres of milk made of poor quality milk powder, urea or some detergent. About 200 litres of this ingredient would be boiled at 80ºC and a layer formed at the top by using some chemical, instead of lime, extracted. Likewise, 200 litres of refined oil would be boiled and the layer at the top removed. Later, this mixture would be poured into the remaining 800 litres and the temperature was gradually brought down by 10ºC to 15ºC, yielding a semi-solid product. “Left for a few hours, it was then cut into 5 kg bricks of paneer.” According to the SSP, even more worrying was how the chemical-laden residue water was drained into borewells, thus polluting the underground water as well. 
  • Before the raids in Punjab, paneer was available at Rs 120 to Rs 180 for dairy and sweet shop owners. “However, now, it is available in limited quantity, and that too, for around Rs 220”, says a sweet shop owner in Patiala. “The orders for paneer-based items have dried up. People prefer other items”, he adds.

Agents of harm

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: 

  • Detergents, which are used to wash clothes, are used in milk products to enhance their whiteness and thickness.
  • Boric acid is commonly used for eliminating bugs, acting as eyewash, getting rid of roaches, used as ear drops. It’s a good antiseptic too. In milk products, however, it is being used to give it more shelf life.
  • Nitrates on dairy ranches come from several sources. These also make up a significant form of nitrogen in commercial fertilisers. The heavy use of commercial fertilisers may lead to increased levels of nitrates in plants.
  • Hydrogen peroxide is used as an oxidiser, bleaching agent and antiseptic.
  • Over the past few months, the word formalin or formaldehyde is on the lips of most fish-loving Punjabis, ever since The Tribune reported on how the drug is used to increase shelf life of fish coming from the sea. The preservative formalin can cause cancer. — Aman Sood from Patiala
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