Take to task food business operators playing with lives

The tragic death of a 10-year-old girl in Patiala from food poisoning believed to have been caused by a chocolate cake bought from Kanha Bakery through delivery app Zomato underscores the need for stringent enforcement of food safety laws.

This is not the first time that a birthday celebration has been marred by a cake rendered toxic on account of unsafe ingredients or unhygienic conditions during the baking and decorating process, or during handling or storing, leading to food poisoning. While in most cases, the victims have recovered, in the Patiala case, the young girl succumbed.

In October last year, three persons, including a four-year-old girl, had to be admitted to a hospital in Erode, Tamil Nadu, with very serious symptoms of food poisoning following consumption of a cake and egg puffs from a local bakery. Two months prior to that, the food safety officials in Tamil Nadu’s Villupuram district seized 65 kg of sub-standard bread and cake from a manufacturing unit, following a complaint of four single tooth dentures found in a cake! On December 31, 2022, food safety authorities in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, seized hundreds of cakes from bakeries for using prohibited colours and banned additives.

On December 29 last year, a District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission in Ernakulam, Kerala, directed KN Bhaskaran of Susheela Bakery to pay Rs 30,000 as compensation and Rs 20,000 as costs to Santosh Mathew for the food poisoning suffered by him and his family following consumption of puffs bought from the bakery.

On August 31, the Additional District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission held a south Bengaluru bakery liable for selling black forest cake in a rotten state and asked Vinayaka Cake Shop to refund the cost of the cake (Rs 3,590) and pay Rs 3,000 as compensation and Rs 3,000 as costs of litigation to Pooja Shankar, whose son’s birthday party was ruined because of the substandard cake.

On August 11, the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission in Ludhiana directed Nova Bakery to pay Rs 20,000 as compensation to Rajinder Kumar for delivering a cake infested with ants. The cake had been bought by Kumar for his son Kartik’s birthday and following consumption of the cake, the boy as well as some guests fell ill.

In all such cases, the biggest problem is to get the food tested to prove its toxicity or the presence of microorganisms that caused food poisoning, because by the time people start getting sick, the food would have already been consumed. Even if there is a left-over piece and is adequate to satisfy the requirements of the law and is preserved, not every consumer knows the food safety law and her/his right to get the food independently tested in a government laboratory.

So, consumer courts have kept this practical difficulty faced by consumers in mind and based their orders on the investigation of the food safety officer in response to the complaint, the doctor’s certificate of food poisoning and the proof of purchase. In fact, in Yum Restaurants (India) Pvt Ltd vs Kishan Hegde (February 5, 2020), the apex consumer court agreed with the restaurant that the initial onus of proving that the food served was defective would be on the complainant. “However, the burden of proof cannot be so high that an ordinary customer visiting a restaurant is unable to discharge the same. If a customer files an affidavit stating therein that the food served was rotten/stale/inferior in quality, such an affidavit will be sufficient to discharge the initial onus placed upon the customer, unless it is shown that the complaint is motivated or actuated by extraneous considerations,” the Commission said.

Coming back to the Patiala case, the food safety authorities must complete the investigations quickly and ensure maximum punishment under the law to the perpetrators. Equally important, the food regulator should use the compensation provision (Section 65) in the Food Safety and Standards Act to ensure that the guilty pay the compensation amount provided under the law.

Compensation for non-grievous injury can go up to Rs 1 lakh and for grievous injury, up to Rs 3 lakh. In case of death, it shall not be less than Rs 5 lakh and can go up to any amount, depending on the case. The parents should also seek a steep compensation under the Consumer Protection Act. Of course, no amount of money can compensate for the loss of their child, but imprisonment and stiff penalties would send out a warning to all those food business operators who play with the lives of consumers.