How often have you felt that the milk you consume seems to be more watery than usual? How often have you noticed the uncharacteristic red stain left behind on your fingers after the use of chili powder? How often have you bitten into a forlorn sand grain while consuming your staple? Food, which is our basic sustenance and fuel for our life force is now being contaminated and wasted in large proportions for the sake of personal monetary gain. Even the milk that we drink is not as pure as it may seem. For all we know it may contain adulterants that have been used as thickening agents.
Food fraud hasn’t just been a thing of the recent times but has its roots in times that date back to a millennium where the most commonly adulterated items included olive oil, tea, wine and spices. The most common food items and substances adulterated today however are honey, meat and other grain based food; fruit juices, organic foods, coffee and processed foods.
With the latest Maggi fiasco, it may seem as though India has suddenly woken up to the troubling problem of the lack of Food Quality and Safety, but in actuality this situation is not just for India to deal with but the world as food fraud is a global evil. Due to tough laws and weak regulation in matters concerning the Maggi situation, thousands of people have lost their jobs and many industries and companies that depended on the Maggi stock and shares have gone into a loss on their business worth more than several hundred crores. Nestle Maggi faced an estimated loss of up to ₨ 320 crores where instant noodles worth ₨ 210 crore were withdrawn from the market and destroyed and another ₨ 110 crore worth of finished and related material stock remained at its factory outlets and distribution centers.
It is very rare that food frauds are picked out as most of the cases go unnoticed adding to the growing losses affecting the nation’s GDP. The criminals generally use adulterants that do not cause drastic physical harm or public menace in order to go undetected by authorities. Consumers too, largely don’t pay much attention to the quality, allowing food fraud to go incognito.
India’s corruption rank out five in the Global Food Security Index is a staggering three when the world average is just a mere 2.6. This indicates that corruption has a major role to play in the likes of food adulteration. One of corruption’s many faces is food adulteration, which has caused people to compromise food quality and public health along with the nation’s economic growth for the sake of their voracious pockets.
According to the reports sent to the Union Health Ministry, milk and water too haven’t been left out in the race for the most adulterated goods. They too are adulterated along with instant noodles and pasta. Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu seem to be the worst offenders among other states in milk and water adulteration as indicated in the reports made to the Union Health Ministry. The production of milk was at an estimated 146 million tons in 2014-15 alone. Large scale importing of milk and milk products is also being done and food fraud in these sectors results in major losses to the government. Milk from cows have often milk from other animals added to it apart from chalk but also adulterated with reconstituted milk powder, urea, and rennet, among other products (oil, detergent, caustic soda, sugar, salt, and skim milk powder). Another common occurrence with milk is it’s watering down and then adding of a chemical, melamine, to hide the dilution.
As part of a 2009 public meeting, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) adopted a working definition for Food Fraud as “fraudulent, intentional substitution or addition of a substance in a product for the purpose of increasing the apparent value of the product or reducing the cost of its production, i.e., for economic gain.”
Economically Motivated Adulteration, in the global sense has a much more devastating impact than in India alone. The Grocery Manufacturers Association estimates that food fraud may cost the global food industry between $ 10 billion to $ 15 billion per year, affecting approximately 10% of all commercially sold products. Food fraud occurs in a variety of forms ranging from replacement and addition to removal.
Food Adulteration will cause a loss of the consumer’s trust in the food supply chain, and a loss in trust among regulators, industry, and may result in market and trade disruptions causing economic injury to the nation’s economy. Economically motivated adulteration is often a significant financial and public relation crisis for food industries and companies.
So what has the world and India done to combat this growing evil?
The United States of America has formed two important agencies or associations in order to combat the problem of food security and fraud. The first being the Food and Drug Administration FDA, one of the principle federal agencies and the other being the United States Department of Agriculture USDA, the second principle agency that works to protect the food supply from food safety risks, unintentionally and intentionally introduced contamination as a part of its border inspections. These two agencies are the most noted and leading food regulatory authorities. The FDA is responsible for cross checking the safety of all the domestic and imported food products and the USDA is responsible for regulating most of the meat, poultry and egg products.
According to Commissioner of the Department of Food Safety in Delhi, the government of India has enacted and notified a new law namely, “Food Safety and Standard Act, 2006” and the “Food Safety and Standard Rule, 2011”. However, food safety laws for anti-adulteration of food have already been in place since 1954 in the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954. Since the quality and safety of food is a major concern for the people, the FSSAI has strengthened its regulations towards domestic and imported goods to ensure no contamination or adulteration takes place.
Despite all the measures being taken to ensure safe consumption of food, this malevolence will not be eradicated unless one of its root causes is taken care off, that is corruption. As the years move on, it is our hope that we don’t end up drinking water as a substitute for milk.
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