Food safety norms paralyzed, imports go unchecked: Centre tells SC

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Friday pressed the panic button and rushed to the Supreme Court to challenge a Bombay High Court order which it said has paralyzed the mechanism to enforce food safety norms on imported food items.

Mentioning the appeal filed by Food Safety and Standards Authority against the HC's May 8 order staying a May 11, 2013 notification, additional solicitor general Paras Kuhad told a bench of Justices B S Chauhan and A K Sikri that it had laid down the procedure for grant of 'product approval' for the imported food products for which standards were not in place in India.

Section 22 of Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, enacts an absolute prohibition against the manufacture, sale or import of novel food, genetically modified articles of food, irradiated foods, nutraceuticals, health supplements, proprietary foods etc except as provided under the law.

The FSSA used to grant 'product approval' on a case-to-case basis for food items falling under Section 22, which included products which were not naturally occurring foods but foods produced in a novel method. The bench agreed to hear the petition next week.

Challenging the May 8 order of the HC extending stay on the notification till June 30, the FSSA said, "As a result of the order, the continuance of regulatory exercise for assessing the safety (of imported food items) with reference to varied parameters set out under Section 16 to 26 of the Act and related Rules and Regulations stands paralyzed."

"As a result of the order, neither the food manufacturers not the food importers are obligated to make the necessary disclosures about the ingredients, status of regulatory approvals for such foods under international regulatory regimes, existing scientific literature as regards safety etc and thus the holding of regulatory assessment to determine the true characters of these foods remain paralyzed," it said.

The omnibus nature of the HC order was such that it prevented the FSSA from granting product approval to those imported food items which met the safety standards, it said.

"The interim order has also had the effect of virtually paralyzing almost entirely the discharge of regulatory functions by the Food Authority in relation to all the food products that are specified under Section 22 of the Act," it said.

A division bench of the Bombay HC had given a split verdict on a petition by Vital Butraceutical Pvt Ltd and Indian drug Manufacturers' Association, which had challenged the May 11, 2013, notification. However, the third Judge, to whom the petitions were referred to after the split verdict, had given the interim order on May 8.