Odisha Governor called upon all stakeholders to enhance public understanding of nutrition, food safety

 
Bhubaneswar: Governor M C Bhandare on Saturday called upon all stakeholders to enhance public understanding of nutrition and food safety.
Inaugurating a national seminar on 'Food Safety' at Hotel Mayfair here, he appreciated the efforts of the organisers, Institute of Quality and Environment Services and Rotary Club of Bhubaneswar Heritage.
He spoke of a phased and all-inclusive approach to food safety, especially in capacity building, knowledge dissemination and efficient regulatory mechanism to achieve the desired goals.
On awareness generation, Bhandare said that the role of media, health and nutrition professionals, educators, opinion leaders and food producers was important.
Terming milk adulteration as suicidal and coming down heavily on the offenders, Bhandare said that often milk is contaminated with glucose, contaminated water, starch, detergent, urea, pesticides and toxic ingredients, paving way for many diseases including paralysis.
He appreciated the efforts of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) and hoped its findings would help take corrective measures.
FSSAI CEO VN Gaur said that 15 to 20 per cent of hotel food in India was contaminated.
Food-borne diseases in the US caused the nation a loss to the tune of 51 billion dollars and it would be far more in the case of India considering its population and food habits.
Organising committee chairman DN Padhi spelt out the purpose of the seminar, especially on growing apathy towards unsafe food and step a need to reduce the burden on food safety.
Among others, principal secretary, Tourism Ashok Tripathy, DDG of Bhubaneswar Doordarshan Kendra BN Panigrahi, BP Tripathy and Debabrata Panigrahi also spoke.