CALLING THE BLUFF-DUPLICITY OF FSSAI!

From day one since the advent of the much "acclaimed" Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) with a hard core bureaucrat at the helm of affairs, it was pointed out by many with a fair knowledge of Indian food industry that nothing much was going to happen by changing PFA to FSSAI unless this body is equipped with experts in the field of food science and technology and vested with real Authority to chase the fraudsters for bringing them to books. Unfortunately people in Delhi with power to do any thing they want, have neither the time nor the inclination to listen to the views of others opposing their policies. The result is the creation of a moribund organization going in circles, in the face of a serious crisis that threatens the health of citizens with foods most of which are sold in the marker after adulteration, not knowing how to tackle the situation.

The very foundation of India's food safety program is shaky as Government of India has passed the buck for protecting food supply to its citizens to the states under the pretext of constitutional propriety. The resulting dichotomy is a ripe recipe for disaster as neither the Center nor the States do any thing substantial to establish the required infrastructure to monitor foods, commodities as well as that manufactured by the industry, and book the culprits who indulge in selling unsafe and unfit foods day in and day out. Poverty of ideas, lack of vision, low sensitivity to the sufferings of the citizen and practically no dedication are the hallmarks that exemplifies the food safety program in the country. 

Look at the situation in the country to day! For a nation with a population of 1.2 billion plus, the food requirement is huge and the country is fortunate in managing to produce adequate food grains to feed the nation, thanks to the hard work and sacrifice by its farmers. But due to mismanagement by the government, poverty and hunger are rampant and the country continues to be at the top when international hunger index ranking is considered with many African countries faring much better! The quality of food grains distributed under the PDS is scandalous and if FSSAI conducts a serious check on them real truth will come out.Take the quality of milk supplied by many vendors which are worse than poisons and the cooperative diaries do not fare better. FSSAI or the State safety authorities seem to have an unwritten understanding that milk quality of these diaries need not be checked at all with the result most of the time sub-standard quality product is supplied to the unsuspecting citizens.

While the criticism is a well intentioned one, probably it might have no impact at all since all government controlled consumer products industries are totally insensitive to any sufferings of people as they are "drunk" with power entertaining the notion that they are all "mini Gods" with license to do any thing! Take for instance the recent introduction of Masala Butter Milk by a cooperative diary in Karnataka and if one has to believe the label declaration the product as 10% fat, 13% carbohydrate and 11% proteins! Probably these diaries are manned by personnel who do not know even the fundamentals of food! The tragedy is that the Dairy still gets away with such rabid misdeeds. 

In an interesting case that reached the High Court in Delhi recently, no less an Authority than FSSAI submits an affidavit declaring that "there is a well established system to monitor presence of pesticides in fruits, vegetables and other food items in the country"! Can there be a bigger "lie" than this and fortunately the honorable judges were able to see through this "fraud" pulling up the Authority for misleading the court. The court rubbished the declaration of the FSSAI" in the light of facts" available with the court! Further the court had the wisdom to say that on many occasions non-permissible pesticides have been found in vegetables sold in Delhi and surrounding areas and dubbed the "tall claims" of the FSSAI as "surprising" after perusing their affidavit, which informed the court that there were 68 state pesticide testing laboratories, besides regional and the referral central insecticides laboratory for monitoring food products in the country. Similarly court also had to ridicule the stand of FSSAI that the presence of Endosulfan in food items, despite the pesticide being banned, is due to its presence in water used for irrigation, already contaminated years ago! These instances show that FSSAI is not all equipped to deal with country's food safety program as they have neither the manpower to fulfill their responsibility nor necessary knowledge about the ground reality in the country.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

  

SAFETY OF FOODS-INVOLVEMENT OF VOLUNTEERS

Food adulteration for economic gain is as old as the food business and doing some thing to increase the profit margin is a tempting tendency very few human beings can resist. While innocuous adulteration may not pose much health risk to the consumers, a food adulterator becomes progressively greedier with each success and becomes bold enough to cross the line between economic adulteration and harmful adulteration that can cause grievous injury to the population. The field of adulteration is so vast it has place for individual traders, unorganized industries and reputed branded product industry. It can happen in an affluent country like the US or Europe or in an authoritarian regime like that in China or in a poor democratic nation like India. Universalization of food adulteration cannot be an excuse for condoning the same in our country.

Some of the rampant cases of adulteration of our every day foods include coffee with moglad coffee or other charred materials like roasted ground peas, wheat etc, cocoa powder with shells, sweet wines with diethylene glycol, butter with lard, ghee with vanaspati, rapeseed oil with other lesser priced oils, better looking flours by adding alum chemical, artificial colors based on copper, zinc, indigo etc, Sudan yellow and red in chilli powder, lead chromate in turmeric coloring, using starch in sausage, milk containing urea, melamine and other non protein sources to boost protein values, cinnamon powder with beechnut husk and other bark materials, honey with sugar syrup, liquid foods with formaldehyde for preservation and many such innovative frauds on the consumers. Our country seems to be well advanced in trader-friendly adulteration technology while consumer-friendly achievements in R & D in food technology is not worth crowing about. Misbranding, wrong labeling, misinformation and wrong and misleading advertisements are frequently noticed amounting to virtual fraud on the consumer. The present policies, strategies, infrastructure and personnel seem to be totally inadequate to tackle the menace of food adulteration. Is there no way out from this Catch-24 situation for the hapless consumer of this country?

There are two suggestions worth considering by GOI without any prejudice in the interest of the consumer. First GOI must take into confidence country's professional talents and there is no better way to it than involving professional associations like AFST and various others specialized in packaging, engineering, fish processing, dairy products, edible oils, nutrition etc can have a partnership in monitoring the food markets across the country. Under such a partnership, the members of these groups can be given a status to enable them to assess the quality and safety of market products by visual examination and report those suspected, to their associations which in turn will notify FSSAI for further action. An active vigilance system with FSSIA can unearth those traders who have the prolific tendency to defraud the consumers through food adulteration based on these reports. Imagine the availability of a gigantic voluntary work force of knowledgeable and experienced people for helping the GOI to improve the quality and safety of products from food industry and its potential impact on consumer welfare. Second, the good facilities for food analyzes established in many Universities across the country and research and training personnel willing to work for the govt at least for 15-25% of their time for undertaking the analytical job for a small honorarium reflect the real strength of the country which must be tapped in a constructive way.

While making suggestions like the one above, we must be aware of the consequences of involving volunteers in a function considered exclusively to be in the domain of the govt. There will definitely be some dilution of the 'importance' and the 'authority' of employees on the pay roll of the govt and it is not going to be easy to get such a radical suggestion accepted by those in power. Professional associations can work like technical NGOs which exist in this country in thousands, flourishing under govt patronage. Breaking the nexus between enforcement personnel and the violators of food laws is not easy to achieve in this country since prevalent system has been in place for decades. Changing PFA to FSSA, which took 53 years and hundreds of representations to the govt for this small change, does not mean any thing to the consumers because the very same people are going to run the new system also with no change in attitude and work ethics. Change we must, for the sake of our future generations!

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/

COOKING MEDIUM-PURE OILS VS BLENDED OILS

According to the current food standard protocols, in India blended oil formulations shall not contain more than two individual oils. That too the proportion has to be such that the individual oils used must not be less than 20%. Nature of the individual oils used must be declared on the label. In contrast the same statute book allows a number of oils in the manufacture of vanaspati type of products. How such a dichotomy has crept into the PFA is not clear and probably this must have been thought of in the mistaken belief that it could be easier for the chemists to detect willful adulteration by unscrupulous traders. Industry however seems to have ignored the provision for marketing blended oils because such blends are difficult to be promoted in India where there are strong loyalties to pure oils of different types in different regions. But use of more than two oils in evolving a single cooking medium may be attractive and it is time for clearing such innovative oil blends based on technology and nutrition.

The blended oil concept has been given a respectability by the recent development of a couple of products in India based on scientific investigations and nutritional considerations. These recipes make use of oils such as rice bran oil, groundnut oil and other vegetable oils and proportion of the individual components is determined by their triglyceride profiles and nutritional chemicals present such as oryzanol, tocopherols, tocotrienols and phytosterols. As all these oils have good thermal stability, the blends also inherit this important quality. Recipe development is relatively simple once the chemical composition of each oil is known, with optimal fatty acid ratio of saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids being arrived at by using computer soft ware programs commonly used by the animal feed industry. What is needed more importantly is the process that can make use of relatively cheap oils like palm oil, soybean oil and palm kernel oil. The critical requirement is to keep the blended oil in liquid condition at temperatures of 4C-10C, normally encountered during winter in most parts of northern India. The process for making blended formulations, developed by one of the R & D Labs under CSIR, is unfortunately patented denying access to large number of small scale oil millers and depriving the country of the nutritional benefits that would have protected millions of malnourished population. Even if the recipes are published, house wives can make their own blends at home for daily use.

Palm oil is going to be the most important vegetable oil in India for years to come as it is relatively cheaper and any efforts to popularize blended oils will have to be mounted around this particular oil. But as it is solid at normal room temperatures, user convenience is minimal compared to liquid oils like peanut oil, mustard oil, sesame oil etc. This is where food technologists have to play a role in lowering the melting point through use of high end technology involving physical chemistry. Further, blends of more than two oils must be permitted so that the nutritional quality of different oil components will supplement each other offering a wide variety of products to the consumer. Added to this is the bonanza of natural flavor concentrates characteristic of each of the vegetable oil now available to give distinct personality to each of the blends evolved. With modern electronic instruments available to chemists, precise analysis is a matter of routine and does not pose any major problem to the enforcement agencies. Powerful brand images, to be created for multi oil blends by edible oil industry, will make them acceptable to the Indian public, especially if the cost is attractive.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/

JUNK FOODS AND THE 'WISE' MINISTER

India is 'blessed' with a Heath Minister at the Central Level who considers him self as wise and moralist. UPA Government has pitchforked the present incumbent largely due to the coalition politics without assessing his credentials for running a ministry concerned with the life and death problems of the billion plus population. Of course he is a 'doctor' and therefore has a 'right' to be the health minister in spite of his obscure past before 'enthronement' as minister at the Center. One of his sterling achievements was his single minded mission to oust on personal grounds, an eminent surgeon as the Director of AIMS, New Delhi and thanks to the judiciary the ill-conceived attempt did not succeed. He has taken upon him self crusades to stop smoking by reputed cine artists in films presumably to prevent youngsters from inculcating this habit considered harmful. On one hand Governments derive considerable revenue in the form of duties and taxes while on the other hand platitudes are expressed regarding the ill effects of smoking. Recent ban on smoking in public places is claimed as a magnificent achievement though how effective this ban can be at the ground level remains to be seen. A bold Government must ban tobacco cultivation altogether if this habit is to be eradicated but passing on the buck is the name of the game in a democracy like the one that exists in the country. Same is true with liquor also which contributes huge sums to the exchequer in the form of various financial levies and Government is happy repeating ad naseum that consuming liquor is harmful and increasing the taxes year after year under the illusion that people will shun this habit on economic consideration. It is a reflection on the credibility of this nation that in a state like Kerala there are longer queues before liquor outlets than that seen in many temples!

The latest unsolicited proclamation from our 'learned' Minister is that India has to be saved from the epidemic of 'junk foods' and families must insulate their children from exposure to junk foods. It is similar to pushing some one into a theater showing a bad movie and then advising him to shut his eyes. lest he will be corrupted! The news paper reports about the statements from the minister do not indicate whether he fully knows what is a junk food before proclaiming these products as culprits for causing damage to the health of the nation. If the minister is so concerned he should have the experts in his ministry to study the problem if any and consider practical ways and means of counteracting the same before passing such a subjective judgment. It is a pity that food adulteration has become so rampant in the country and his ministry has nothing to contribute to stem this menace in spite of the existence of the draconian PFA Act which rarely brings about conviction for the offenders. In stead of the platitudinous advice on junk foods, the minister would have been remembered by the posterity if he shows all his fury towards the food adulterators who thrive under his very nose!

How can a wise doctor like the minister call any food 'junk' when millions in this country are suffering from hunger and starvation in spite of the 'giant' economic strides this country is supposed to have made? A food is a food by any name and it is the scant respect for the food that sustains life, makes people call them 'junk'. Why not call the habit of eating wrong foods at wrong times a junk habit rather than using this adjective for decrying the food? After inviting global giants like Pepsi, Coke, Kellogg's, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, KFC, etc to invest in the country, how can any one call them peddlers of junk foods? Was the Government not aware of what they were producing before giving them clearance to operate in India? Is there any rationale in such a behavior? If a food is rich in calories or high in sugar or fat, it cannot be called a junk food because it has also other nutrients, though in small amounts, like proteins, vitamins and minerals. An ice cream product may be high in sugar and fat but it also contains valuable milk solids rich in proteins and calcium. Potato chips may contain some what higher levels of fat but it also has the goodness of potato that is eaten every day. In stead of abusing such foods as junkies, a policy of educating the consumer to moderate their consumption to sustain health is considered more appropriate. Tax payers' money which sustains the activities of ministries like the one headed by the doctor minister would have been well spent if efforts are made in the above direction.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/