Conflict of interest assumes great significance when it comes to statutory regulatory bodies that deal with public health and food safety issues. Vested interests are always working to get rules or standards that work in their favour. This is what happened when the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) was set up to act as an ‘independent’ food safety regulator five years ago.
Industry representatives were nominated to scientific committees to set standards for a number of parameters ranging from pesticide content to food labelling. The membership of these panels read like Who’s Who of food industry – Nestle, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Britannia, Marico, ITC, GSK, Hindustan Lever and so on. It was only after being exposed in the press that the Supreme Court took note of it and directed FSSAI to purge its panels. Till then the Authority did not even have a rudimentary conflict of interest policy in place.
Like the Environment Ministry, the FSSAI too has not learnt any institutional lessons. Industry consultants and scientists working on industry projects continue as members of its scientific panels. The same is the case with the regulatory process for genetically modified food crops.
Scientific panels are infested with scientists working on seed industry projects or enjoying their grants and at the same time regulating projects of the same sponsors. In one case, a scientist in the regulatory body approved a research project proposed by his wife. Another recent case is of the expert panel that the health ministry set up to decide follow-up action after a damning parliamentary report on human clinical trials. The Ministry chose an expert who is head of clinical trials division of a corporate hospital!
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