Compromised: Food safety and more

Renu Sud Sinha

The huge increase in the detection of food adulteration cases across India — from 15 per cent in 2012-2013 to 28 per cent in 2018-2019, as per the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) — should be a sign of worry and serious concern, but food safety experts view it differently.

Ashish Bahuguna, former chairperson, FSSAI, says, “Adulteration has been taking place since millennia. The other way to look at it is that as awareness is rising, more cases are being reported.” Not only awareness, the ambit and definition of adulteration have also expanded. FSSAI defines it as “the addition or subtraction of any substance to or from food so that the natural composition and quality of food substance is affected”.

“It can be accidental or deliberate, substandard (but not unsafe) or a health hazard, and the penalties are also fixed accordingly,” explains Bahuguna.

Pushpa Girimaji, a specialist in consumer law and safety, says as the Supreme Court has termed not just the right to food but to safe food a fundamental right, food safety has emerged as a major challenge. “Particularly, after Covid-19, awareness has increased about the benefits of eating minimally processed foods.”

Earlier, foods susceptible to adulteration included edible oils, milk and milk products, spices, pulses, grains and tea. The adulterant agents were inferior quality oils, water, chalk powder, dust, pebbles, etc. However, with time and technology, offenders also became innovative using smarter techniques and agents, even harmful chemicals and paints, to cheat consumers. In recent years, honey has been found to be hugely adulterated with even some major brands not being able to meet the standards.

Regulation has also kept pace as the new Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, replaced an archaic Prevention of Food Adulteration Act. The pace may be slow, but change is happening and the national regulator, FSSAI, is driving that change in partnership with various state authorities.

“The law says that all manufacturers of food need to be registered, but in India, where the informal sector accounts for over 80 per cent of food products being sold, the focus, obviously, is on the organised sector for compliance of norms, packaging and labelling standards, as well as procedures. The balance of convenience lies in addressing issues in the organised sector and in products that have a large consumption base,” adds Bahugana.

Since its inception in 2008, FSSAI has been on an overdrive and year-long campaigns are lined up for various products. It recently conducted its annual nationwide campaign against adulteration in edible oils and seized more than 27,500 litre of loose oil. With the festival season coming up, the focus would shift to milk, khoya, ghee, sweets, even silver varq.

The Director, food and drug lab, Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), Punjab, Ravneet Kaur Sidhu, says, “At an initial stage, the purpose is to create awareness among manufacturers and traders, so we start taking samples of various products from shops and back-end units. Most of the time, that in itself is a signal to traders and manufacturers and generally they are careful about norms.”

“Sometimes, surveillance sampling is also based on the nature and number of complaints. If we notice that complaints against particular products are increasing, we start aggressive sampling,” says DK Sharma, Joint Commissioner, FDA, Haryana. “We also do season-based samplings. Like in December, when the demand for gur-shakkar (jaggery) is more, we take samples from units in Ambala and Yamunanagar.”

There are other factors as well. The Punjab Government has launched a week-long campaign to check adulteration in milk as supply gets affected by the lumpy skin disease in cattle. “We are going to take five samples per district,” says Manoj Khosla, Joint Commissioner, Food Safety, FDA, Punjab.

Chandigarh has emerged on the top, literally, where food safety is concerned. In the recently released annual State Food Safety Index (SFSI) by the FSSAI, it bagged the third position among union territories. The index, started four years back, assesses the performance of states and UTs in ensuring safe food for all.

Mobile food testing vans, which bring testing facilities at your doorstep, have been Chandigarh’s contribution in making people aware in checking adulteration practices. This mobile facility is the brainchild of Sukhwinder Singh, Designated Officer, Department of Food Safety and Standards, Chandigarh. “When we would hold awareness campaigns, I always felt that showing live tests to people would be more informative. In 2016, I sought permission to use and convert an old ambulance into a mobile testing van. After a successful trial, the FSSAI adopted my model and now there are such mobile testing vans in every state.”

“There has been a good public response. During the festival season, the number increases manifold with people bringing mostly khoya and other sweets,” says Neha, a lab technician who is part of the team working with the mobile van in Chandigarh.

Challenges galore

“The food safety law and its various provisions and rules, which are constantly evolving with times, are really good. The problem lies in the implementation on ground,” says KS Pannu, former Director, Mission Tandarust Punjab. Girimaji agrees, “The number of surveillance samples range between two and five. Given the size of districts, it is hardly adequate.”

“There are about 600 districts in the country,” Bahuguna points out, “and the population per district is also sizeable. On an average, there are one or two food safety officers, which is not sufficient enough.”

Says Rajib Dasgupta, professor and former chairperson, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, School of Social Sciences, JNU, who has been a consultant on many FSSAI panels, “Governments are not employing as much as they ought to. The food safety sector is an extremely trained human resource segment. Both the Central and state governments need to have more trained people, otherwise it is a losing battle.”

The solutions

The challenge may seem unsurmountable, but all hope is not lost. “We should incentivise the producers to comply with the regulations. A mechanism is also needed to bring the unorganised sector under control. The first step is a proper database, which is needed for who you are trying to regulate. The enforcement would come after that.”

Dasgupta also suggests more aggressive campaigning for health literacy and awakening the political will that is foremost for change to take place.

Young changemakers

Millennials have taken on the baton to bring about this change actively. Started by Babbar Singh and Manoj Maurya in 2017, Delmos Research is a Karnal-based startup providing strips to test adulterants in milk. A BTech in dairy technology from the National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Babbar, who has worked with Amul and other leading brands, says, “Having worked in the dairy sector for seven-eight years, I knew the problems first-hand. Also, milk adulteration is increasing and adulterators are becoming smarter, always a step ahead to beat the quality-checking systems. I wanted to do something to check that. In 2017, we licensed an enzyme-based testing strip that could detect even minute adulteration. Initially, it could test only one adulterant. Now we can check five and are working to create a strip that can check nine agents. Enzyme-based testing is much superior than the present chemical-based testing systems. Our strip can test even 0.005 per cent adulterant present in the milk. It is simple and can be used by anyone, anywhere; just dip and the intensity of colour change can tell you about the presence and amount of various adulterants present in the milk.”

RAAV Techlab is another young startup based in Delhi, founded by Rahul Kumar and his three friends. “We would get hugely diluted milk in the college mess. That motivated us to come up with a technology that would test the milk quality. In 2018, we started our firm and created a machine that would check milk adulteration. Unfortunately, most big players were indifferent. We have now adapted it to check quality and wastage in agriculture produce.”

Young India is aware and equipped to be the change.

How to avoid adulterated products

• Opt for packaged products.
• Never buy an abnormally low-priced product.
• Avoid raw produce, have cooked food, boiled milk.
• Always read labels.
• Be aware and informed.