Operation Ruchi to keep tabs on food additives

State wants food safety from farm to table

The Food Safety wing will launch Operation Ruchi, a Statewide initiative for food safety, to regulate the use of additives and flavour enhancers in food products, Health Minister V.S. Sivakumar has said.

The State will seek legislative means to ban misleading advertisements, mainly of junk and packaged foods.

He was speaking at a State-level workshop on Food Safety, organised by the Food Safety wing under the Department of Health, here, on Friday.

He said the potential of social media, online facilities, and WhatsApp messaging service would be used to promote food safety and also to help the public register complaints.

The government was planning initiatives to ensure that food safety was maintained from the farmland to the dinner table, he added.

Earlier, inaugurating the workshop, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said an organised movement was required in food production, with an accent on organic products, for the State to be self-sufficient in food.

Grama sabhas should take over the task of food production, including vegetables, utilising government’s farmlands for cultivation and with the help of agencies such as Kudumbasree, he said.

A model to emulate

North Kerala is self-sufficient in milk production, an achievement which the central and southern regions should aim for, he said.

At a session on modern food analytical methods, Director of Vimta labs Vasi Reddy said the future of safe food standards was quite complex, with new elements to be tested before food can be certified safe. If earlier, just heavy metal contamination was being tested for, today each item was being tested for hundreds of pesticide residue and microbial contamination.

The head of Meat Technology, Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, George Oommen, said government departments would have to work together to ensure the safety of meat and meat-based products because pesticide and chemical residues in foods of animal origin enter the food chain through feed and water.