Government takes on food contamination with plans for ‘product recall’ safeguard
Shaken with the rising incidents of adulteration of food products manufactured in India and sold locally and abroad, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) – under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare – is all set to usher in a ‘product recall’ procedure to ensure food safety in the country.
Once the procedure is in place, any food product, ranging from tinned products to packaged milk, if found to be counterfeit, adulterated or contaminated, can be seized and recalled at the production stage, retail stores or even from consumers.
If a product is found to be spurious, the entire quantity of the item produced in the ‘production batch’ period will be recalled. It could be thousands of butter packets belonging to the specific period in question, or lakhs of baby food packets.
It would also be possible to trace and remove a tainted product at any part of the supply chain.
In November last year, Tasty Nuts, a variety of spice-coated fried peanuts, from Haldiram’s Nagpur plant were recalled in Australia as the product was found to be contaminated with aflatoxin, a highly toxic compound. The product was recalled from retailers and even consumers.
Product recall is an essential part of food safety. Atlast FSSAI has woken up to the problems faced in the enforcement.
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