Safety stick for milkmen

Milkmen found injecting cows with oxytocin for boosting milk production would not be spared the government rod, said animal and fish resources minister Giriraj Singh today.

Singh's announcement came at the inauguration of the two-day workshop on "Applications of Food Safety Act, 2006, in dairy industry" at Scada Business Centre. He said the state would ensure an effective implementation of the legislation. It lays down science-based standards for articles of food, regulates their manufacture, storage, distribution, sale and import and ensures availability of safe and wholesome food for human consumption.

The workshop has been organised by Bihar Agricultural Management and Extension Training Institute. Singh said: "Raids would be conducted and action taken against milkmen who would be found injecting cows with oxytocin for milk production." He added: "Food safety is the focus of persons everywhere. Twenty-five per cent diseases happen because food safety is not taken care of."

The minister's focus for food safety was not only milkmen but also products like mineral water and junk food.

Singh said although mineral water is considered cleaner than tap water, the product is not up to the standards. Similar was the case, Singh said, with junk food popular with youths.
He added: "Camps on food safety would be organised near colleges and universities to spread awareness among students. Samosas, which students are so fond of, are fried in the same oil over and over again. Youths are not aware that this affects them."

Singh said quality and purity of food had to be ensured both at the production and consumption level, for which the agriculture and animal and fish resources department had to play an important role.

K.M. Nath, retired joint director, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, New Delhi, said: "Food Safety Act, 2006, was implemented on August 5, 2011. The act was prepared with the motive to have a single legislation for all food products, to be controlled by a single department."

M.N. Singh, the director of Sanjay Gandhi Institute of Dairy Technology, Patna, said: "It is important to modify certain standards of dairy products to the international levels so that all items produced here are accepted worldwide."

FDA receives over 600 food licence applications as deadline nears

Over 600 hotel and restaurant owners have applied at the FDA office for the mandatory food licence after the recent change in rules. The application deadline is November 30. After December 31, hotel owners who have not renewed their licence or converted to the requirements of the new Food Safety Standard Authority of India Act from the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act will have their licence cancelled for three months. Only after these three months will they be able to register for a fresh licence. Before the change in rules, the PMC used to grant the food licence.

"We have received nearly 614 forms for the licence and it's mandatory for us to give the food licence within two months of accepting the forms," Assistant Commissioner of FDA Chandrakant Salunke said. The officer added that after the verification of various documents submitted by the hotel owners, the FDA will give them the licence in two months.

"Even if they do not receive the licence in two months, they can run their businesses presuming the FDA has granted them the licence," said Salunke. With the amended Food Safety and Standards Act (FSSA), 2006, now coming into force, it is mandatory for all food manufacturers, including small eateries, to register or renew their licence from the FDA.

"We have received more than Rs 48 lakh as licence fee. Hotel owners whose food manufacturing is more than two metric tonnes have to pay Rs 7,500 per year. It's Rs 5,000 for hotels whose food manufacturing is more than a metric tonne and Rs 3,000 for food manufacturing below one metric tonne," Salunke said. "All street food vendors who are having an annual turnover of less than Rs 12 lakh will have to pay Rs 100 as registration fee per year."

The FDA has reconsidered its decision to levy a fine of Rs 100 per day on those who do not renew or convert their licence within the given time. "As the norms and regulations are new, we are giving a concession to hotel owners and are not fining them even after the last date," Salunke said.

Ganesh Shetty, president of Restaurants and Hoteliers Association, said the body was helping its members with the new regulations. "We have sent 220 registration forms till date of those hotel owners who are members of our association," Shetty said.

Cooking oil now in spray form: New technology from Andhra-based Kuking Sprays

Vijayawada-based B R Kuking Sprays Pvt. Ltd is planning to roll out commercially, the first-of-its-kind cooking oil spray technology, called Aerosol technology, under the guidance of International Crops Research Institute (ICRISAT), Hyderabad, by February 2012. This technology would now offer cooking oil in a sprayform.

"It took about four years to develop Aerosol technology which involved formulation, processing and developing the machine. The project cost was Rs 4 crore," Rami Reddy, managing director, B R Kuking Sprays, informed FnB News in a chat over telephone.

Elaborating on the mechanism of cooking oil spray, he mentioned that usually the food regulations did not have an Aerosol concept included and hence had to deal with regulatory affairs.

It was a challenge developing this technology as it worked on pressurising the oil with gas concept in order to bring the oil in a spray form. "We had to modify the product to fit into the Indian standards and regulation," he said.

Highlighting the benefits of cooking oil spray, Reddy said that it would help spread uniformly on the cooking pans and be beneficial for the health of the consumers, as it would reduce the viscosity of the oil thus leading to a reduction in the consumption of oil by 10-15 times against the regular oil.

"We have started a pilot plant in Pamarru, 40 km from Vijayawada, and are planning to set up a commercial plant that has a capacity to make 5,000 cans (250 ml for Rs 150 ) per day," said Reddy. The technology is semi-automated and can be easily handled by the labour, he informed.

The company would also look into the export of such new technologies in future, particularly to east-European and east-Asian countries in the coming year. Also, he mentioned that the company was in close talks with some of the top five Indian players in the edible oil market for technology licensing and custom manufacturing.

However, not many companies were keen to experiment in the cooking oil segment as it posed a stiff competition in the market. "The company now would tap the health sector," he said and confirmed that the company would also look into expanding the business to set up a bigger plant.

For this, the company had already sought the assistance of the ministry of science and technology and some venture capital funds.

Reddy said that the industry professionals could avail the technology in just four months' time and claimed that this type of technology was a new concept to India and Asia as even developed countries like United States imported this technology.

Reddy said that the company received a positive nod from the apex bodies like Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) for their innovative technology.

It was was particularly designed for common cooking oils such as groundnut and sunflower in south India covering states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala as these oils were mostly used here.

On menu: DNA-certified seafood

Canberra: Restaurants around the world will soon use new DNA technology to assure patrons they are being served the genuine fish fillet or caviar they ordered, rather than inferior substitutes, an expert in genetic identification says.
    In October, the US Food and Drug Administration officially approved so-called DNA barcoding — a standardized fingerprint that can identify a species like a supermarket scanner reads a barcode — to prevent the mislabeling of both locally produced and imported seafood in the United States.
    Other national regulators around the world are also considering adopting DNA barcoding as a fast, reliable and cost-effective tool for identifying organic matter.
    David Schindel, a Smithsonian Institution paleontologist and executive secretary of the Washingtonbased Consortium for the Barcode of Life, said he has started discussions with various restaurant industry and seafood suppliers about utilizing the technology as a means of certifying the authenticity of delicacies.
    “When they sell something that’s really expensive, they want the consumer to believe that they’re getting what they’re paying for,” Schindel said. “We’re going to start seeing a self-regulating movement by the high-end trade embracing barcoding as a mark of quality,” he said.
    While it would never be economically viable to DNA test every fish, it would be possible to test a sample of several fish from a trawler load, he said. Schindel is organizer of the biennial International Barcode of Life Conference, which is being held Monday in Adelaide. Schindel leads a consortium of scientists from 50 nations in overseeing the compilation of a global reference library for Earth’s 1.8 million known species.