Karaikudi bakers body to move court for injunction; seeks inclusive FSSA

The interim stay on the enforcement of Food Safety and Standards Regulations (FSSR), 2011, granted by the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court recently, has boosted the confidence of other traders' bodies in Tamil Nadu, including the Karaikudi Bakery Owners' Association (KBOA). In fact, the KBOA has decided to move court for an injunction in licensing and registration cases, and seems confident that many more writ petitions will follow suit.

“We would appreciate it if the Food Safety and Standards Act (FSSA), 2006, is simplified, and more importantly, made more inclusive. However safe we try to make our products, we are no match for the multinational corporations and large-sized producers who are members of the panel formed to implement the Act. We face the threat of being wiped out of the industry, and that could affect the livelihood of lakhs,” R Kaleeswaran, honorary secretary, KBOA, said.

“Not only is the nomination process to this panel flawed, but vests in the food safety officers powers that they will misuse. We (small- and medium-sized food business operators) would like to run our businesses without having to resort to any unethical practices, but obtaining a licence or registration without paying an arbitrary penalty, which is often very high, is impossible. And to top it all, we have to become compliant in less than four months,” he said.

FSSAI - 7th CAC MEETING ON 27.4.2012

Food Safety Act: Traders to propose amendments

Traders under the aegis of MP Food Manufacturers and Sellers Federation are planning to propose amendments in Food Safety and Standards Act. The proposal would be sent to Food Safety and Standards Authority of India and Members of Parliament. “Whatever is decided for traders should be in accordance with the Indian tradition and culture. Legal provisions imported from other countries should not be imposed on the traders,” said president, MP Food Manufacturers and Sellers Federation Ramesh Khandelwal.

“Even though the act is there, there is no necessary infrastructure to enforce its implementation. For example, under the act, it is mandatory to send food samples to a laboratory of international standard, but the same is yet to be set up in the state,” claimed Khandelwal. The traders have demanded scrapping of the clauses that require having a technician with  B Sc degree for food manufacturing units and financial audit of these establishments. The traders also want the magnitude of penal provision to be lessened. Khandelwal said that while stringent punishment should be there for traders involved in adulteration, the existing provisions would only hassle honest businessmen.

The federation will also prepare a CD of these suggestions and the same would be sent to Food Safety and Standards Authority of India and Members of Parliament within a week. The traders are also seeking legal advice on these demands after studying various provisions of the act.

DINAMALAR NEWS

Mad cow illness found in dairy animal in California

The initial new box of insane cow illness in a US given 2006 has been detected in a dairy cow in California, though health authorities contend a animal acted no hazard to America’s food supply.
The putrescent cow, a fourth ever detected in a US, was found as partial of an agriculture dialect notice programme that tests about 40,000 cows a year for a deadly mind disease.
No beef from a cow was firm for a food supply, pronounced John Clifford, a department’s arch veterinary officer. “There is unequivocally no means for alarm here with courtesy to this animal,” Clifford told reporters.
Mad cow disease, or cow spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is deadly to cows and can means a deadly mind illness in people who eat sinister beef. The World Health Organisation has pronounced tests uncover humans can't be putrescent by celebration divert from BSE-infected animals.
After an conflict in Britain that appearance in 1993, a US strong precautions to keep BSE out of US cattle and a food supply. In other countries, a widespread of a infection was blamed on farmers adding recycled beef and bone dish from putrescent cows into cattle feed, so a pivotal US step has been to anathema feed containing such material.
Clifford pronounced a California cow was an atypical box of BSE, definition that it had not got a illness from eating putrescent cattle feed.
That meant a box was “just a pointless turn that can occur each once in a good while in an animal”, pronounced Bruce Akey, executive of a New York State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory during Cornell University. “Random mutations go on in inlet all a time.”
Questions sojourn about how a cow died, and either a occurrence will prompt a cultivation dialect to change how it tests for a disease. But Mike Doyle, executive of a University of Georgia’s Centre for Food Safety, pronounced a contrast complement worked since it had held what was a really singular event. “It’s good news since they held it,” Doyle said.
Clifford did not contend when a illness had been detected or accurately where a cow had been reared. He pronounced a cow had been during a digest plant in executive California when a box was detected by unchanging representation testing.
Dennis Luckey, executive vice-president of Baker Commodities, pronounced a illness had been detected during a Hanford, California, send hire when a association comparison a cow for pointless sampling.
Luckey pronounced a cow had died during a dairy and been incidentally tagged for a notice programme.
Michael Marsh, arch executive of Western United Dairymen, pronounced a cow was an adult animal over 30 months old, and had seemed normal when it was final observed. He pronounced a cow was initial tested on 18 April.
Rendering plants routine animal tools for products not going into a tellurian food chain, such as animal food, soap, chemicals and other domicile products.
There have been 3 reliable cases of BSE in cows in a US: in a Canadian-born cow in 2003 in Washington state, in 2005 in Texas, and in 2006 in Alabama. The 2005 and 2006 cases were also atypical varieties of a disease, cultivation dialect officials said.
The dialect was pity a lab formula with general animal health officials in Canada and England who would examination a exam results, Clifford said.

Past scares about insane cow illness have influenced beef exports to Japan and other countries. Japan criminialized all US beef imports in 2003 after a initial box of insane cow illness was detected in a US. Japan resumed shopping American beef in 2006 after a shared trade agreement environment new reserve standards.

HC tells govt to consider curbs on tobacco

ALLAHABAD: The Allahabad high court in an important direction has directed the state government to now consider the appropriateness of restricting the consumption, sale and distribution of tobacco and nicotine in food products on the same lines as the MP government has already put restrictions on the consumption, sale and distribution of the tobacco and nicotine in food products.
Passing this order on a PIL filed by Indian Dental Association and UP state & others, a division bench consisting of Justice Amar Saran and Justice Anurag Kumar has asked the chief secretary of the state either to put restriction on the same lines as in MP or show cause through the appropriate secretary in this court by the next date on May 23, 2012as to why such a direction imposing the restrictions on the consumption, sale and distribution of tobacco and nicotine in food products may not be issued by this court for enforcement of regulation to 2.3.4 prohibiting the use of tobacco and nicotine as an ingredient in any food product.
The bench has also made it open to the manufactures of the paan masala and gutkha products to move intervention application for clarifying their position by the next date. The petitioner through the PIL seeking ban on the production , sale and consumption of tobacco and nicotine in food products, it has been alleged that the use of the same are causing oral cancer.
It was submitted in the court that " food safety and standards ( prohibition and restrictions on sale) regulations 2011 " under the food safety and standards act 2006 has been enacted empowering union government to frame regulation to put ban on the use of tobacco and nicotine.The court in its order referred that " according to a study conducted by the indian counsel of medical research and the WHO ( world health organization), south east asian regional office, new delhi, 2001 , 80 percent