The Centre had replaced the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act with the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, and notified its nationwide implementation from August 5, 2011.
Though the state government, too, had notified this Act last year, with no new staff to ensure its proper implementation, the Act has failed to achieve its purpose of increased surveillance and speedy prosecution of erring manufactures and sellers.
Officials said a district-level food safety official was now supposed to perform various functions like granting food licences right till the block level, thus adding considerably to the workload.
Little has been done to upgrade the food laboratory where the seized item is supposed to be tested within 15 days.
The state has a lone composite testing laboratory at Kandaghat and it has been battling with staff shortage for years now.
Field officials said in the absence of any uniform format, they had not been able to send adequate samples for testing.
The directorate has made the required format available and the staff has been asked to take at least 10 samples in a month.
While this will greatly increase the workload of the laboratory, meeting the 15-day deadline will be an arduous task for the staff.
With no legal adviser yet having been made available to officials, they have little help in pleading their cases before the designated courts.
Director, Health and Safety Regulation, Rajesh Sharma said they were in the process of implementing all provisions of the Act and they had sought a separate budget from the state as well as the Union Government.
He said uniform formats had been made available to the field officials and regular training programmes were being organised to educate them about the provisions of the Act.
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