Despite SC order, FSSAI's scientific panel has 3 members from industry

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is yet to take out three industry members from its scientific panel.

This has been discovered in spite of the fact that earlier in February 2011, the Supreme Court in its order sought the removal of industry members from the scientific panels and scientific committee of the FSSAI and instead have independent members.

The Authority had re-constituted the panels which had 20 industry members. Out of these 20 members, the FSSAI excluded few members and reabsorbed others after completion/termination of their services to the industries by taking them into the panels as industry consultants.

However, the status of the three members remained unchanged till today. These members who are still on board belong to private organisations. They are Dr Deepa Bhajekar, proprietor and chief executive officer, Micro Chem Laboratory, Mumbai; Dr Mridul Salagme, managing director, IADFAC Laboratories, Bangalore; and Rashmi Kulshrestha, expert in pesticides residues and contaminants, food and pharma regulatory consultant, Regulatory Wisdom.

While Bhajekar is a member of the sampling and analysis panel, Salagme is a panel member for labelling and claims/advertisements and Kulshrestha is serving on the panel for contaminants in the food chain.

Bhajekar and Salagme belong to private laboratories and Kulshrestha works in a consultancy firm.

When FnB News approached the Authority, an official said, These two members (Bhajekar and Salagme) came from the laboratory background and do not belong to an industry but scientific bodies.

However, private laboratories have clients from allied industries like hotels & restaurants, retail chains, shopping malls & foods courts, corporate offices and industrial cafeterias, food & beverage retail franchisees and food importers/ exporters. Not only this, Micro Chem Laboratory is also empanelled for testing of imported food items. McDonald's, Domino's Pizza, Sodexo and Modern Bread are some of its clients for domestic testing.

Bhajekar responded, I am not governed by the Act because I am not a manufacturer. The specifications mentioned in the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, are more relevant to a manufacturer of raw material and finished food products. As a laboratory, we test and certify the quality of food products based on the Act.

Last year, the Supreme Court, had asked the FSSAI to exclude all members from the industry to comply with Section 13 (1) of the FSSA, which states, The Food Authority shall establish scientific panels, which shall consist of independent scientific experts.

Scientific panels, according to the SC, provided an open ground for lobbying for the big industrial names.

The FSSAI officer, caught in confusion, said, We have already filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court giving a new list, so if the Supreme Court thinks no members from private organisations should be included we shall do so. In any case we are going to reconstitute these panels and committees by May 2012 and an EoI has already been floated in this regard.