A HAMBURGER MACHINE? WHY NOT MACHINES FOR INDIAN TRADITIONAL FOODS?

Hamburger is a convenient product consumed all over the world and many fast food restaurants offer this popular preparation as a standard item in their menu. The product is so simple that it can be made in a few minutes for serving fresh to the consumer. Hamburger, supposed to have originated in Hamburg in Germany around 1890, became famous being accepted universally all over the world by 1940. Patties from ground meat sandwiched between two rolls of bread is the basic product which can also be prepared using supplementary ingredients like onion, lettuce, tomato etc. World over it is estimated that more than 100 billion Hamburger sandwiches are sold and according to one estimate, if they are arranged in a line side by side, it can cover the earth's circumference 32 times! Americans alone consume about 25 billion burgers annually. Design and fabrication of a mechanized automated burger making machine with a capacity to churn out 400 pieces an hour, announced recently, is going to be a boon to many restaurants when it is available commercially. A classical example of a market driven development heading for unqualified success. The Tortilla plant developed in Brazil is another similar example of market driven endeavor. 

One is reminded of attempts in India to mechanize preparation of many ethnic foods without much success. The Tirupati Temple( TTD) laddus which were being made earlier completely by hand received attention of CFTRI as early as 1980s but even to day design of a continuous machine similar to the hamburger machine reported has not yet emerged. Imagine the usefulness of such an automated plant for making laddus which are in great demand, the temple management not being able to increase production through manual practice. Still credit goes to TTD for introducing several mechanized gadgets for syrup making, mixing and some other operations which made it possible to make products which are much safer with minimum human intervention. Another case is that of Sabarimala Neyyappam which even to day is made manually though the current production is not able to meet even a small part of the demand from pilgrims visiting this shrine. 

The point is not that nothing is being done by food technologists and engineers in the country for mechanization of preparation processes of many popular foods of Indian origin. CFTRI has done yeoman service in designing a few such machines for the food service industry though only a limited number of plants are in working mode. The machines that make Roti, Idli, Dosa etc are technically sound but the transformation of these designs into viable and rugged production models did not materialize in most cases for which both the user industry and CFTRI must be equally blamed. The dedicated Food Engineering Center at Mysore, floated by the Ministry of Food Processing Industry (MFPI) of Government of India during mid 1990s never took off due to many reasons least of which was the leadership turmoil that affected the functioning of the institution, suffering direction and long term vision. 

Probably a time has come now for taking a deeper look at the engineering needs of India's small and micro scale enterprises who are engaged in making about 5000 and odd different types of ethnic products made and consumed in various parts of the country. The MFPI which a few of its own food technology centers, CSIR with many multi disciplinary technological and engineering institutions  under its aegis and Universities having food technology programs must join hands in taking up a time bound development program in traditional food manufacturing area on a mission mode to transform the primitive industry into a high tech one. The time frame must be not more than 5-6 years with close monthly monitoring and mid course adjustment to accomplish the objective. The country must keep in mind that it is only the small scale sector of Indian food industry which is starved of technology and engineering back up while all the big fish that control the market have access to global technologies and local resources to develop what they want in double quick time.   

Mechanization is an integral part of food industry in many developed countries where manual labor is becoming increasingly in short supply and preparation of Hamburgers involve workers with different handling functions to turn out large numbers in short time. Besides intervention by humans invariably poses risk of contamination including infection with pathogenic microbes. But Indian situation is different as food industry is being looked upon as an extension of the agricultural sector with large expectation for generating value addition and contribute better to the economy of the country. Therefore success or failure of the processing sector will have an adverse impact on the millions of farmers in the country. Failure is not an option for the present day India and efforts are to be redoubled to make the small scale and micro enterprises sector a dynamic and vibrant one. 

Full automation is not what is being sought for but a hybrid versions of plants with most of the unit operations mechanized.  Employment generation is still a national objective and therefore full automation may reduce the employment content significantly which is not desirable at least for the present. Indian scientists, technologists, engineers with expertise in food processing are second to none in terms of their ingenuity, creativity and innovation potential. All that is needed is to repose confidence in them, fire their imagination, provide motivating type of leaders with good track records and policy and financial support to bring the best out of them. There is till some hope that India can yet become the food basket to the entire world!

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

FOOD ADVERTISEMENTS-FSSAI TO BE LAUDED FOR ACTION AGAINST VIOLATORS

World over a significant segment of food industry indulge in unethical practices including mislabeling and misleading advertisements making tall claims about the virtue of their products with no supporting evidence. A vigilant overseeing mechanism can haul up the delinquents for their wrong practices. But it is the advertisements, especially in the electronic media, that become dangerous to vulnerable consumers who believe in them. There is no official technical vetting of the contents of TV commercials before telecasting and this "free for all" arrangement is a win-win situation for both the product promoters and the telecasting companies. Such promoters are so unscrupulous that they indulge in saturation advertisements targeting children and unassuming house wives and unfortunately there are no guidelines for the telecasters in accepting sponsored ads with misleading contents. The Chairman of the Press Council is more interested in politicking than disciplining the reckless media! The latest initiative by FSSAI in clamping down on such culprits is indeed laudatory and must be appreciated.

Why should there be any restriction on such advertisements when most of these are based on some information gleaned out from the literature? Answer is very simple. The claims are often exaggerated and some times misinterpreted and the way the commercial ads are designed, it carries some conviction with the viewers, most of them being children and house wives. Many parents tend to be swayed by  ceaseless ads which are cleverly juxtaposed with popular serials and other programs creating a lasting image of the products promoted. Such impressions, carried as a baggage when going for shopping, translate into buying some of them involuntarily! Imagine who will not be swayed by claims that promise to make their children taller and healthier or make children more intelligent and brainy! 

It is right on the part of FSSAI to find these ads "misleading and deceptive". Take for instance the claims of a brand of Multi-grain Noodles', which unabashedly proclaim day in and day out that the product has nutritional benefits s or for that matter , a brand of cooking oil which promises "healthy heart"!  In still another case FSSAI filed against the advertisements of two brands of beverages for claiming that they provide three times more stamina than an ordinary chocolate drink though the manufacturers concerned do not have any scientific evidence to support such a claim! Citizens in this country must have been fed up by advertisements by a multi national company that its product, containing more than three dozen nutrients, is a "complete food" though there is no such thing in the world as a complete food. Health pundits all over the world want consumers to adopt a diverse diet containing whole grains, fruits and vegetables and unsaturated oil containing foods. If a product containing no grains, no dietary fiber, is claimed as a complete good, it is both unethical and borders on criminal misrepresentation. 

One of the most difficult tasks of a consumer when going for shopping, is to decipher what is presented on the label. Assuming that the consumer has the necessary time and patience to read the label completely the message coming from such labels is often confusing. Many times the information is printed in very small prints which are next to impossible to read, let alone understand. There is no uniformity with regard to the declaration of MRP, pack weight, ingredients, nutritional data, manufacturing date and "best before" date. This is where iconic representation of the quality of a product can be of great help to millions of consumers, especially those who does not understand English or other languages. 

It is one thing to issue notice and another thing to follow it up through deterrent action and whether FSSAI has the necessary determination to punish these culprits remains to be seen. The list of brands against whom notices have been issued includes some of the giants in food product manufacturing and their political clout cannot be under estimated. With most of the legal luminaries, commanding astronomical fees, rushing to take up cases of all hues and colors, no matter how morally or ethically they are not factual, FSSAI can be expected to have a full fight on their hand if these cases are really pursued to their logical end. Here are best wishes for this "Authority" to succeed.

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

MOVE OVER STEVIA, HERE COMES MONK FRUIT!

With sugar driven human disorders on the rise all over the world, search has been on for decades to bring out zero calorie sweeteners with unquestionable safety for long term use and having no after taste. One of the essential features of such sweeteners must be that they are as concentrated in sweetness as possible so that very small quantities can simulate sweetness of natural sugar with user friendly features. Till about a decade ago synthetic non-nutritive sweeteners were dominating the market and the safety of most of them is still under a cloud with no unanimity among safety experts. It is only recently that Stevia glycosides, extracted from the Stevia plant became an almost universally accepted natural zero calorie "sweetener" and started its commercial debut. Pushing behind all the synthetic sweeteners Stevia is at the center stage at present, with practically the entire food processing industry accepting it as an ingredient compatible with most products designed for low calories. 

In spite of vast strides made in farming the plant and expanding the source of Stevia leaves from which the sweet glycosides are extracted, purified and crystallized, there still remains some problems when Stevia glycosides are used in formulating low calorie foods, most serious being the mild after taste and non-uniform taste perception in the oral cavity. While the first bite or dose consumed gives intense sweetness, subsequent ingestion gives less and less sweetness. Thus the intensity of sweetness goes down as the consumption progresses. Of course most consider this as a minor inconvenience because this is the only commercially successful non-nutritive sweetener which has established its credentials. Progress of Stevia sugar industry has been phenomenal during the last 5 years with many major producers emerging on the scene including food industry giants like Coke and Pepsi. 

Practically boasting same credentials, a few next generation sweeteners are now being positioned to challenge the dominance of Stevia. Most prominent among them to hit the market is a product derived from a fruit of the herbaceous perennial vine Siraitia grosvenorii, native to southern China and northern Thailand, used traditionally by local people for imparting sweetness to their preparations. Commonly known as Monk fruit ot Buddha fruit, it is more popularly known as luo han guo in the local area. It is claimed to be a part of the traditional Chinese medicinal system with its unique property of imparting a cooling effect when consumed and was very commonly used to treat obesity and diabetes among the population there. Though the fruit juice is most commonly used as a cooling drink, its value as a source of zero calorie sweetener is attributed to a group of organic chemicals collectively called Migrosides. The juice contains fructose and glucose, both calorie yielding sugars and hence to get a product with no calorie, adequate processing is required to isolate the migrosides in pure forms.

If the reports appearing about monk fruit sweeteners are true, almost 90 percent of the sources of monk fruit is monopolized by a New Zealand-based company on whom the processors have to depend on supply of dry fruits for isolating the migrosides. Unlike Stevia glycosides, monk fruit is amenable to water extraction and it is the juice which has to be further processed to remove glucose, fructose and other calorie yielding substances to get concentrated products containing 90% plus pure migrosides. There appears to be five forms of migrosides in the fruit, distinguished by affixing numbers I to V, the sweetest being the type V, 300 times sweeter than natural sugar. In 2010 monk fruit derived sweeteners were declared as generally safe for use in foods.

One of the issues regarding the use of the word natural is whether it can be used if the raw material undergoes severe processing steps like Stevia which needs the solvent extraction process to obtain a crystalline substance with high purity. Monk fruit based sweeter preparations are made from water extracts and limited quantities available so far come from vertically integrated production system where the monopoly manufacturer supplies quality seedlings to its Chinese contract farmers who are legally bound to supply the company the entire fruit yield. it is claimed that the seedlings are the optimized result of natural plant breeding by the company through traditional practices, not resorting to genetic modification. 

While most of the current interest in monk fruit is due to its sweetening ability, there are several other bio-active compounds in the fruit that could become valuable and marketed ingredients down the road. Of course there needs to be a pro-active marketing effort to make these new sweetener source acceptable to the processor and the consumer. Already there are branded products based on Monk fruit marketed by reputed companies which include 'Purefruit', 'BlueSweet', 'Fruit20', 'Fruit50', 'Nectresse' etc. Though these products are claimed to be superior to Stevia, how far the industry will agree to this claim remains to be seen. What is clear with this new avatar of sweetener is that it is going to take time, even if accepted, to fine tune its use in new food products which can be quite time consuming but probably Monk fruit will emerge as a major competitor to Stevia in the coming years. 

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

  

ANIMAL BASED FOODS VS PLANT FOODS-FOOD SAFETY LANDSCAPE

It is not necessary for any one to possess extra ordinary intelligence to discern the fact that animal derived foods, being rich in many nutrients are much more vulnerable than plant based foods to serious contamination with pathogens. Naturally the extent of vigilance needed to safeguard the safety of these foods is much more compared to that required in case of plant foods. It is very true that between 2008 and 2011 vegetables like leafy greens, tomato, melon, sprouts, spices, herbs were responsible for many food poisoning outbreaks though the sources from where they got contaminated were never properly identified. If so is it judicious for a responsible body like European Food Safety Council (EFSA) to blame these foods of plant origin as solely responsible for the outbreaks and resultant consequences?

According to the above high profile body that is supposed to oversee the food safety related tasks for the entire EU has just brought out a statistical treatise which says that "germs from non animal food origin (FoNAO) were responsible for almost half the number of deaths caused by food transmitted pathogens"! Of course these claims were made based on the "scientific opinion'" of its panel on biological hazards obviously consisting of knowledgeable experts! It further goes on to say that from 2008 to 2011 number of  outbreaks, cases, hospitalization and deaths from contaminated foods belonging to the category FoNAO showed significant increase as compared to that from foods of animal origin (FoAO). Biggest risks were from Salmonella infected leafy greens, bulbs and stem vegetables followed by Salmonella infected tomatoes and melons. E.coli was responsible for tainting fresh pods, legumes and grains while Norovirus. Shigella and Salmonella caused food poisoning in leafy greens, fresh pods. legumes and grains spices, dry powder and herbs and sprouts.

Statistically FoNAO were implicated  in 10% of all outbreaks, 26% of cases reported, 35% of hospitalization and 46% of deaths. But can these figures be considered realistic and true? A careful analysis of the available statistics does not substantiate these claims and the attempt to gloss over the fact that meat industry still has the most wretched record as far as food safety is concerned and if there is any industry which stands indicted for sheer callousness and deficient practices compromising the health of the consumer it is this particular industry encompassing meat and poultry processing. Whether rearing the animals and birds or slaughtering them or processing animal product industry has one of the worst safety records and shifting the blame to plant foods for majority of safety related episodes is not fair.

If the stand taken by EFSA is true, the populations in many developing countries, where plant foods are consumed extensively due to culture, religion and economic compulsions, should have disappeared long ago due to food poisoning! In stead of looking inward to find out the reasons for plant foods raised in those countries in Europe posing safety problems and take adequate remedial measures to improve the situation, condemning an entire class of foods is not justifiable. When the whole world is trying to reduce meat consumption due to its association with many life style disorders and shift to more fruit and vegetable in their daily diet, reports like the above can cause a set back to these healthy efforts.

Though fresh produce like leafy greens, tomatoes, melons were implicated in some of the recent episodes, these are all cases of cross contamination in the farms using contaminated water or handling facilities where meat is also processed or common distribution and storage facilities. Probably this is where organic farming is scoring over the commercial farming sector and it is rarely that organic produce is implicated in any major food poisoning episode so far.    

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

SPECIAL CHOCOLATES FOR TROPICAL COUNTRIES-NEW INNOVATION

Cocoa, along with Coffee and Tea forms the troika of stimulant beverages and Caffeine is the common component that provides the typical stimulant properties attributed to these beverage crops. Interestingly each one of these has different usage form evolved over centuries with innovative variations from time to time. While coffee and tea are predominantly used for making drinks with or without milk, cocoa is mostly processed into chocolate products which enjoy a very high acceptability among children and adults alike. There are a few products incorporating cocoa solids made by the industry such as chocolate confectionery, ice cream, chocolate milk, baked goods and many others which are liked by the consumers willing to pay premium prices. By far the most accepted product from cocoa is a variety of chocolates catering to different category of consumers,

Cocoa pods produced by the plant contain a cluster of beans embedded in a slimy matrix and the processing of the ripe pods involves breaking of the pods and exposing the beans to fermentation to get the clean seed. While the matrix breaks down and runs off, the beans are mostly sun dried to a low moisture content for long term storage, lest they are spoiled by fungal growth at higher moisture contents. The typical flavor associated with cocoa is developed during the fermentation stage due to action of break down products like acetic acid, ethanol and other organic substances on the bean besides making it mellower. The conventional  chocolate making process involves roasting of the dry beans under optimum conditions and shelling them to obtain nibs which are in grit form for further processing. Grinding the nibs, conching and tempering are the core operations that distinguish good chocolate from low quality ones. With modern developments, chocolate making has become a machine intensive process leaving very little role to any skilled artisans who were ruling the roost once.

Pure chocolate is 100% cocoa solids without addition of any ingredients and there are many derived products from this base  material such as sweetened chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate. The chocolate liquor obtained after conching is a semi liquid product at temperatures beyond 37C and sets into a hard mass as the temperature is lowered. Refined cocoa mass as it is called comes in brittle blocks that can be stored for use in various value added consumer products. Sweetened chocolate and milk chocolate are made from the cocoa mass by adding ingredients like sugar, milk powder etc. White chocolate is a misnomer for a product which does not contain any cocoa solids but based on cocoa butter only. Generally chocolates are processed to give the final product a melting characteristics that will ensure that it melts at body temperature when eaten viz 37C. One of the biggest problems associated with general types of chocolates is that the product becomes soft and messy during handling in tropical countries where the day time temperatures can be as high as 45C during summer season. Is it not possible that this drawback can be overcome through technological innovations? 

If recent reports emanating from the UK are to be believed such a feat has been accomplished by one of the major chocolate brands and products made are stable, firm and can be handled without softening and slushy at temperatures up to 42C. According to the claim made by the company its product called "melt-resistant" or "temperature-tolerant"remains solid even after exposure to temperature as high as 40C for as long as three hours unlike its conventional counterpart vulnerable to melting at 33C. Many tropical countries in Asia, Africa and South America can be expected to welcome such a development as the median day time temperatures during most part of the year is in the range of 33-45C. Food scientists know that use of high melting fat (hydrogenated or fractionated liquid oils) in chocolate making in place of cocoa butter can achieve hardness but such products cannot be legally called chocolates under international food laws and regulations.

The new technology now being touted appears to have manipulated the tempering conditions of conched cocoa mass to obtain higher content of type V cocoa butter crystals to modify the melting characteristics appropriately. Traditionally the cocoa mass is heated to 45C to melt all the five crystal forms of the polymorphous cocoa butter, following by controlled cooling to 27C to recover the type 1V and type V crystals which have higher melting temperature properties. Agitation and seeding with small sized crystals further enrich the mass with the smallest sized crystals. What ever details are available on the new technology now being cited for making melt resistant chocolates indicate that .the core of the process is reducing the size of sugar as well as cocoa butter crystals and minimize the extent of fat that coats the sugar particles. How this happens is not very clear though the key to increased melting temperature lies in reducing the size of the cocoa butter crystals to get highest levels of type V crystals.    

High melting chocolate products can become a hit every where in the world but it should not compromise with the crisp and snappy texture of typical chocolate bars. Innovation is a never ending endeavor and efforts must continue to achieve chocolate products which are not affected by wide variations in temperatures encountered in market places. While looking out for melt resistant products, care has to be taken that these products do not become like rocks at lower temperatures and freezing weathers encountered during winter in many countries. There is nothing like a chocolate product which does not need refrigeration or air conditioning for distribution and storage and that should be the ultimate goal of chocolate technologists.

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

WHAT MAKES A NOBEL LAUREATE? BRAIN OR FOOD?

Is there a relationship between between the brain power and attainment of excellence in life? Common senses does indicate that man endowed with superior intelligence has conquered the world and to day homo sapiens rule supreme, at least in planet called Mother Earth. To establish any such relationship one has to define what is excellence and how it can be quantified. Once human beings are recognized as supremely intelligent creatures there must be degree of excellence by which there can be differentiation among them. Can winning a Nobel prize be considered the ultimate in one's life achievement? Nobel prize is given in practically every branch of human endeavor and there fore can be a comparative scale for determining excellence.

Some time back there was a claim that Nobel prize winners invariably come from countries where chocolate consumption is high! Statistically analyzed the study referred above does reflect this fact. Looked from the perspectives of a food scientist or a nutritionist, probably this phenomenon can be explained by the fact that chocolate is one of the richest sources of Flavonoids which are endowed with high levels of antioxidant activity. Heath of human beings in general is directly related to the extent of inflammation at cellular level and resultant generation of oxyradicals adversely affecting the DNA metabolism. Flavonoids and similar antioxidants are supposed to neutralize these highly destructive oxyradicals as and when they are generated. Probably this may be a far-fetched theory but still plausible.

Following the chocolate report in comes another claim that Milk consumption has some thing to do with the ability of human beings to reach pinnacle of their career! Here again the science of statistics has contributed to this "discovery". According to the authors of above "study" Sweden has the highest number of Nobel laureates, about 33 per 10 million since its inception and their per capita milk consumption is estimated to be about 330 kg per year! This country is closely followed by Switzerland, that tiny country with 32 Nobel prizes per 10 million population with milk products consumption to the extent of 300 kg per person per year. A major deviation is Finland with the highest milk consumption, 350 kg per capita,  which has insignificant number of Nobel laureates!. Probably 300 kg per capita annual consumption may be the cut off point beyond which the "Milk effect" does not work! China, the second most powerful economic power in the world is not an admirer of milk with hardly 25 kg per year per person and it has only an insignificant number of winners of Nobel prize, about 9 in number for a population of 1.3 billion plus!. Same is true with India also, with hardly 8 Nobel prizes for its population of 1.2 billion.  

What could be the connection, if at all there is any, between milk and excellence of achievement? Viewed from a nutrition angle, it is very difficult to justify such a correlation though milk is often considered as a complete food containing almost all critical nutrients required for development of body as well as the brain. The theory that it is rich in vitamin D that aids brain development cannot be taken at its face value because people in many tropical countries make abundant Vitamin D through their exposure to sun. Could the affordability play a part in enabling the people from rich countries consuming high quantum of milk and milk products and if so Nobel laureates can come only from such countries.

Are the people from poor countries destined to be inferior human beings perpetually? Their could be another angle which could explain the milk effect and that is not related to milk but to the education standards and infrastructure available in these rich countries. Naturally a good education can definitely enrich the mind and the brain leading to achievement of excellence in whatever field one chooses. There are many bright and intelligent youngsters in countries like India with the right caliber to become Nobel laureates but the poor infrastructure for education and unimaginative policies that prevail here, there is very little scope for expressing their innate talents. Why is that except for a Sir C V Raman or a Tagore who won the Nobel prize working in India, all other winners were people of Indian origin achieving the excellence working in other countries?  

While per capita milk consumption is used for comparison in the above study, the major flaw is that there can be enormous variation among the population with some consuming high amounts of milk while poorer segment must be taking abysmally low quantities. Take the example of India, the top producer of milk in the world where average milk consumption is just about 100 kg per person per year but in the state Punjab it is almost 360 kg per year per person! Does it mean that future Nobel laureates are going to emerge from this state while others have no chance? Statistical correlations have a meaning up to a point but it need not be the absolute truth! Ultimately for excellence in achievement, it 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration! While in science and other finite subjects infrastructure for research has to be of very high order, in social sciences creativity, imagination, deep thinking, philosophy and a fertile brain may play a crucial role.

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

FOOD SAFETY WOES OF KERALA-DOES ANY ONE CARE?

All citizens living in a civilized world have a fundamental right to get safe food and whether the governing system is democratic, autocratic, despotic, communists or any other hue and color, the government is duty bound to protect its population from unsafe foods marketed within is boundary. Modern food service system in most countries rests on processed foods industry, catering sector and dedicated institutions taking care of their inmates. In India there are two other places where food safety needs to be focused and they include the schools and socially oriented feeding centers and temples where pilgrims converge in large numbers. The food safety enforcement agencies should have adequate outreach to cover all these cases equipped with decent infrastructure and resources to carry out its functions efficiently and honestly.

There is stark contrast between the safety management systems in wealthy nations and that which operate in developing countries with limited resources. Whether it is the Food and Drug Administration in the US or the Food Safety Agency in the UK or the European Food Safety Council, their infrastructure facilities for monitoring the quality of foods in the market are considered excellent though they are all squeezed for funds when it comes to upgrading their set ups from time to time and infuse more personnel. Besides undue influence by the industry lobby often comes in the way of doing what is best for the citizens! In India there is supposed to be a powerful "Authority" which cannot do even 1% of the safety vigilance task required to be done. In China where authoritarian dictates were expected to act as deterrent against food fraudsters and others indulging in malpractices, the country was shaken by many food scandals involving the lives of many of its people. Though a 100% compliance in the market is not achievable in practice because of unintended episodes beyond the control of the industry, if a reliable system with focus on consumer safety is put in place, many precious lives can be saved.

This Blog will touch upon the travails of a small state in India, Kerala where there was an uproar regarding the supply of fungus infected prasadam by a popular Temple, as being claimed by the devotees and the response of the authorities concerned. The Temple in question is Sabarimala shrine located deep inside a forest, not easily accessible. The Temple provides two main prasadams, Neyyappam and Aravana payasam to millions of pilgrims coming from different parts of Kerala and other southern states who want to take back home these offerings from the shrine for sharing with their kith and kin. While the Travancore Devaswam Board denied that their Neyyappam was tainted with fungus, many people who had personal experience of buying these product from the official counters are vehement in their assertion that the product was really fungus infected. Interestingly a local Laboratory having accreditation from National Accreditation Board for Laboratories (NABL) confirmed the presence of fungus in some amples randomly collected by them! Who is the ultimate arbitrator in this case? Obviously none and the charade goes on!

According to those observers familiar with Kerala situation, the state government is not taking adequate interest on this vexed problem and most of the analytic laboratories under its aegis do not have approval from NABL. It is lack of support and initiative from the government that has developed such a logjam in safety management of foods produced and marketed and served in the state. Almost all public health laboratories are languishing with dilapidated and antiquated facilities and require massive infusion of funds besides long time to modernize their infrastructure. Why these laboratories cannot be strengthened and certified by NABL is an incomprehensible mystery! It is criminal for any government, claiming to be a democratic one, to ignore this problem any more, putting the health of the population in peril.

It is common sense that results generated in a NABL accredited laboratory will only be accepted by many courts and under the conditions prevailing now the culprits get benefit of doubt invariably. It is time people subjected to such chaotic food safety regime seek judicial intervention for directing the government to initiate a time bound program to upgrade the safety management system on a time bound manner. Each district should have a NABL accredited laboratory where suspected samples can be referred for technical opinion and based on their considered view actions initiated to take to task the violators of food laws.    

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