Making Food Safe From Farm to Plate

ACCORDING to World Health Organisation (WHO), the theme for World Health Day, April 7, 2015 will be Food Safety, a theme of high relevance to all people on the planet, and multiple stakeholders, including government, civil society, the private sector, and inter-governmental agencies. In its media kit, WHO has given a slogan ‘From Farm to Plate, Make Food Safe.’ But what’s safe in Goa? Misbranding of products is a common ploy adopted by food adulteration mafia, an inter-state cartel supplying poor quality, misbranded cheap raw materials to private canteen contractors in public establishments.

A news item published in this daily on February 27, 2015 – ‘FDA penalises Royal Corn Flour for misbranding’ had exposed the gravity of the situation. A sample of the food article of Royal Corn Flour was drawn by FDA’s food safety officer during an inspection of the Goa University faculty canteen operated at Taleigao plateau and sent to the FDA laboratory in Bambolim for analysis. The canteen was found to be unhygienic.

The food safety officer filed a civil proceeding before the District Magistrate-cum-Adjudicating Officer, North Goa under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, who after examining the said matter imposed a penalty fine of Rs 25,000 on the manufacturer, whilst the distributor, and Goa University faculty canteen contractor were imposed penalty fine of Rs 10,000 each for dealing and selling a misbranded food article.”

Ignorance About FSSA

FDA forgot to inspect samples of tea powder, milk, pickles, sauces, food colors, and cooking oil from the same canteen. Instead of summarily ejecting and permanently blacklisting the penalised canteen contractor playing with the lives of unsuspecting academic customers, strangely he was assured continuation of the contract. This action exposed ignorance of educated class about Food Safety and Standards Act (FSSA), 2006 and Food Safety and Standards Regulations (FSSR), 2009. It also showed how public-funded institutions have failed to protect the rights of vulnerable customers to safe food and uphold whistleblower action. Despite frequent cases of food poisoning reported in Goa, scanty attention has been paid by media to unsafe food.

Exception is a scathing investigative report by journalist Navin Jha on July 5, 2014 – “Injecting, mixing and dissolving, that’s how they poison your food”. Jha reported that “Since January 2013 till June 2014, the FDA has drawn 876 samples out of which only 37 samples were found substandard and misbranded. Samples of non-alcoholic products like soft drinks, to spices, confectionaries, and milk and its produces, tea, coffee, fruits, edible oil etc were drawn and tested. Twenty food items out of 37 samples were faulty because the same was misbranded while 17 samples which include samples of milk product, spices had adulterants in it.”

Section 3.1 (j) of FSSA says ““Food” means any substance, whether processed, partially processed or unprocessed, which is intended for human consumption and includes primary food to the extent defined in clause (zk), genetically modified or engineered food or food containing such ingredients, infant food, packaged drinking water, alcoholic drink, chewing gum, and any substance, including water used into the food during its manufacture, preparation or treatment but does not include any animal feed, live animals unless they are prepared or processed for placing on the market for human consumption, plants, prior to harvesting, drugs and medicinal products, cosmetics, narcotic or psychotropic substances.”

“It has to be explored why Goa FDA (see its’ impressive website at http://www.dfda.goa.gov.in/) is reluctant to bring primary food items under subsection (zk) for enforcement. This subsection (zk) says -“primary food” means an article of food, being a produce of agriculture or horticulture or animal husbandry and dairying or aquaculture in its natural form, resulting from the growing, raising, cultivation, picking, harvesting, collection or catching in the hands of a person other than a farmer or fisherman”.

So if FDA is selectively enforcing FSSA then it would not be possible for food consumers in Goa to protect their health by consuming fruits and vegetables loaded with preservatives, pesticide residues, fish teeming with chemicals, enteropathogens and poultry products having steroids and antibiotics residues.

May 2013 report of the Expert Committee to frame a policy for Monitoring of Pesticide Residues in Fruits and Vegetables, Central Ministry of health and family welfare, revealed – “A total of 6441 vegetable samples collected from various APMC/wholesale/retail markets located at different parts of the country were analysed during April 2011-March 2012 by 17 participating laboratories. In 208 (3.2 per cent) samples, the residues were found above MRL levels. The residues of mostly chlorpyriphos, profenophos, triazophos, imidacloprid, acephate, ethion, phorate, quinalphos and cypermethrin were detected in vegetable samples which include unapproved pesticides. A total of 2,170 samples of fruits were analysed by 14 laboratories. Residues were found above MRL were detected in 12 (0.5 per cent) samples. Frequently detected pesticides were of chlorpyriphos, EDBC, cypermethrin, profenophos and lambda-cyhalothrin. Residues of some unapproved pesticides which were commonly detected were quinalphos, profenophos and cypermethrin.”

This report needs to serve as an eye opener for government of Goa which is silent over issues of food safety beginning with quality of water supplied to water consumers. Nobody has courage to drink this water directly from a clean tap. What about radioactive elements in our water and food? Scientist D N Avadhani and his colleagues from Mangalore University in their October 2001 study titled – ‘Dietary intake of 210Po and 210Pb in the environment of Goa’, dealt with the distribution and activity intake of 210Po and 210Pb in local food, diet, and potable water samples. They found that activity concentration of 210Po in fish and prawn samples were significantly higher than concentrations found in vegetable and rice samples. Higher concentrations of 210Po and 210Pb were observed in leafy vegetables than in non-leafy vegetables. Among the diet samples the activity concentrations of 210Po and 210Pb in non-vegetarian meal samples were relatively higher than in vegetarian meal and breakfast samples. Food safety should be high priority issue in civil society, not to be left to only public health department or FDA. Otherwise the future of young generation would be in peril.