Food contamination to be traced back to material suppliers
The government has plans to bring raw material suppliers
to hotels into the ambit of the food safety regulations, Minister for
Health V.S. Sivakumar has said.
Delivering the
inaugural address at a seminar on ‘‘Food Safety and Standards Act (FSSA)
2006’’ here on Saturday, he said a proposal to reward informants
disclosing the source of food contamination was also being considered.
Mr.
Sivakumar stressed the need to trace food contamination to the source,
rather than book hotels where it was served to the customer. “Our
objective is to ensure that only safe, healthy food is served in all
hotels,” he said.
The FSSA, he said, had shifted the
focus to food safety. “There is a need for local bodies to adopt
scientific measures for supply of safe meat from abattoirs.”
The
Minister said the government’s approach was to get the hotels to
rectify their shortcomings rather than prosecute them. He called upon
hoteliers’ associations to support the implementation of the FSSA. “The
government will iron out the difficulties being faced by hotels. The
Chief Minister himself has convened a meeting to sort out the confusion
over certain provisions of the Act,” Mr. Sivakumar said.
Grading system
Commissioner
of Food Safety Biju Prabhakar said a grading system would be introduced
for hotels in association with organisations representing food business
operators (FBOs). The grading, he said, was part of a quality assurance
mechanism.
He said the proposed rating system would
cover wayside eateries, star hotels, and Janata hotels. Establishments
would be graded into four categories, A to D, based on their compliance
with food safety standards.
The inspection and rating
would be done by an accreditation agency in food safety acceptable to
the Commissioner of Food Safety as well as the stakeholder FBOs. The
rating would come down if standards were found to be diluted at any
stage. Manufacturers, food growers, wholesalers, transporters, and
sellers would also be brought into the system, he said.
Mr.
Prabhakar said the commissionerate had identified the hotspots of food
safety in Kerala. “We are issuing improvement notices to the
establishments with shortcomings.”
He said moves were
on to computerise laboratories for testing food samples. “Manual
registration of FBOs has been initiated and online registration will be
introduced soon. Mobile laboratories will be pressed into service.”
Mr.
Prabhakar said many raw materials used by hotels were often found to be
adulterated and carcinogenic. “There is a need to keep a tab on the
suppliers so that the source of contamination can be identified.”
He said investigations carried out by the commissioner had revealed appalling conditions at poultry farms supplying hotels.
Representatives
of the South Kerala Hoteliers’ Forum, Kerala Bar Hotels Association,
Bakers Association, Kerala, and Association of Approved and Classified
Hotels, Kerala, were present.
Proposal to reward informants: Minister
Grading system planned for hotels
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