Oct 5, 2017
Beware! Fortified foods not for all
Hyderabad: The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) plans to introduce doubly fortified wheat flour and salt.
Such fortified foods are not intended to be consumed by everyone; they are meant only for those who suffer from deficiencies of iron and calcium. Fortified foods are recommended to individuals whose deficiency is not managed by dietary supplementation due to the insufficient absorption of minerals.
The food industry, however, is resisting the FSSAI’s latest move because companies will have to appoint specialised personnel and procure additional raw materials and standardised chemicals for the fortification process. According to an internal audit conducted by FSSAI officials, the response received from the food industry is not encouraging.
Nutritionist Sujatha Stephen says, “Fortification is recommended because medical supplementation has low compliance levels. 50 percent of pregnant women are anaemic and highly deficient in vitamin D, and so the government is keen on fortification.” She says that fortified foods are not meant for people who have a balanced diet consisting of vegetables, whole grains, legumes, green leafy vegetables, lean meat, fish and dairy products. “Fortified foods are only meant for those who have been diagnosed with deficiencies, and whose deficiencies have not been controlled despite supplementation by natural foods.”
Fortification is carried out by adding chemicals to food products. Some nutritionists believe that fortification does not provide any real benefit. A senior nutritionist, on condition of anonymity, says, “Chemicals are used for fortification. It has yet to be studied whether the iron and other minerals are absorbed by the body. These foods have side-effects such as weight gain and an increase in the content of minerals which are already adequate in the diet. It is important to restrict the distribution of fortified foods to only those who have deficiencies.”
At present, there is much confusion, even among government officials, whether double fortification will be implemented or not. A senior official from Telangana says, “Government orders have been issued but it is not clear how they are to be implemented and which categories of food actually require fortification. There is a lot of confusion regarding the people who need fortified foods. Identification will require coordination between healthcare workers and the food industry.”
Your Diwali sweets may land you in hospital
Mohali: Beware! Those mouth-watering Diwali sweets you are about to savour could be adulterated. A health team on Wednesday raided factories manufacturing sweets ahead of the festival of lights and found chemicals or artificial colours being used to give a rich golden colour to 'ladoos'. The team also found cockroaches roaming in dough being prepared to bake items.
Synthetic chemical colour is a non-food grade item, said sub-divisional magistrate R P Singh, who led the team along with district health officer Rajbir Singh Kang and food safety officer Sangeeta. Baked cake was seen covered with scrap newspaper instead of food grade butter paper.
Mohali additional deputy commissioner (DC) Charandev Singh Mann said, "Following the orders of the DC, the team has been asked to conduct surprise checks at sweets shops and units across Mohali."
The team raided three units — two in Sector 82 and one in Industrial Area, Phase IX.
The team found that synthetic chemical colours were suspected to have been used in 'ladoos'. This was found at Goyal Sweets in Sector 82. The teams sealed the samples and colours being used.
R P Singh said, "All these are non-edible industrial colours being used in ladoos. We also observed that sweets were being prepared under unhygienic conditions and cleanliness was not proper. Workers were not wearing gloves although they had covered their heads. In one of the factories, curd kept in utensils was covered with a filthy jute bag cloth and no fly traps were installed."
Kang said, "We also found cockroaches roaming in the dough prepared for baking biscuits, cakes and patties. We have shot videos and taken samples. All such samples will be sent for testing. Further action will be taken once the reports are received." Till then, Kang said, notices have been issued to these manufacturers.
The other unit which was raided was Uttam Sweets in Industrial Area, Phase IX, having its outlets in sectors 34 and 46, Chandigarh. The owner, Balwinder Singh, was also present on the premises during the raid. He said he was ignorant of the fact of not using newspaper for baking cakes and assured to correct the preparation ways.
The more attractive sweet looks, more are the chances of its being prepared with adulterated material. Sources said local traders and sweet makers could use substandard products to make huge profit margins, leaving consumers vulnerable to ailments like vomiting, food poisoning, stomach aches and infections
BOX
Health hazards
Low level dyes Yellow 5, Yellow 6 and Red 40 contain compounds, including Benzidine and 4-aminobiphenyl. They are used in the preparation of ladoos and jalebis. Research has linked them with cancer
Food dyes cause allergies, hyperactivity, learning impairment, irritability and aggressiveness
Dyes may contain cancer-causing contaminants
'Dry fruits of low quality'
Health officer Rajbir Kang said industrial colours are used primarily to make sweets look attractive with bright colours. They are toxic and cause internal damage. He also added that dry fruits being used in such factories are not of good quality. "Almonds and pista used to garnish such sweets are of low quality. We found maggots in many such dry fruits during our raids," said Kang.
COLOUR CODES
(Artificial colours generally used in the preparation of sweets)
Golden yellow | Ladoos
KFC to train street food vendors in city
Chennai, Oct 4 () KFC will train 500 street food vendors in the city under the 'Clean Street Food' campaign of Food Safety and Standards Authority of India and be the first quick service restaurant to take up the initiative.
"..this initiative is aimed at capability building among the unorganised sector which will disseminate content of FSSAI's Clean Street Food campaign..", a company statement said.
In the first phase, KFC would train about 500 street food vendors in city during the next five months.
"We consider food safety as a shared responsibility among food regulators and industry players. Through this initiative, we hope to contribute to the larger objective of ensuring health, hygiene and safety standards for consumers," KFC IndiaManaging Director, Rahul Shinde said.
"..we are looking at training 500 street vendors in Chennai over the next five months", he said.
Shinde said the company would consider expanding the programme to other States based on the response from Tamil Nadu.
On the initiative taken by KFC, FSSAI CEO Pawan Agarwal said, "I am happy to see several responsible businesses are coming on-board to support FSSAI's larger set of capability building priorities".
The training would focus on key aspects of hygiene, food handling, waste disposal and pest control to help street food vendors adopt food safety practices while serving safe food to consumers.Upon completion of the training, the food vendors would receive a certification of completion of FoSTaC (Food Safety Training and Certification) training, the release added.
Safety, hygiene go off track
Ambala: Ambala Cantonment Railway Station, one of the busiest stations in the region, may never see a stampede-like situation as the one happened on a foot overbridge in Mumbai, which claimed 23 lives, as a very few passengers prefer to use overbridges to reach other platforms. They instead walk across the tracks, putting their lives at risk.
With a footfall of 25,000 passengers and 350 trains passing through it on a daily basis, the Ambala Cantonment Railway Station is also among the top revenue-generating stations across the country.
Importantly, the authorities have been lenient with trespassers or those crossing the railway tracks instead of using overbridges. Dinesh Kumar, divisional railway manager (DRM) of Ambala division, said, "Only a few people use the overbridges. We do not book the violators as no mishap has even happened at the railway station."
Besides the safety factor, the railway station also stands low on several parameters.
Cleanliness, hygiene in a mess
The Ambala Cantonment railway station was placed 73rd out of 75 category A-1 railway stations of the country in a recent survey on cleanliness released by the Union railway ministry. Since the last decade, there have been talks and promises to give the railway station a facelift and help reach "international standards." The then railway minister Mamata Banerjee had announced a facelift for the station in 2009. Even Ambala MP Rattan Lal Kataria repeated the promise ahead of 2014 Lok Sabha elections. However, such promises are yet to be fulfilled, say local residents and passengers.
A woman passenger said, "The toilets are in a terrible condition. It does not seem that these are cleaned at regular intervals. Even sanitary napkins often are found lying outside the overflowing bins." She said her parents had asked her not to use the public loos at the Ambala Cantonment Railway Station it might lead to diseases.
FOOD SAFETY: 7 mobile food testing labs without a single trained technician
Rs 2.4 cr equipment defunct; Govt ignores manpower requirements
Announced as a milestone in food safety arena of Kashmir, the five mobile food testing labs procured at a cost of Rs 1.75 crore are defunct for want of trained technical staff, while food department has put up a “show” using “health department technicians.”
Seven months since five mobile food testing vans were flagged off by Minister of Health and Medical Education Bali Bhagat, no manpower has been hired to run these mobile laboratories meant to ensure safety and improve quality of food items available in the market. Resultantly, in a bid to “show” that the mobile labs are “functional”, the DFCO has “engaged” one technician from health department for the two mobile labs in Kashmir, a source in Drug and Food Control Organisation (DFCO) said.
The source said that DFCO’s attempts to get “anybody and everybody” as “stop gap arrangement” in crucial food testing business was proving detrimental to the entire set-up. “A health department technician has no training and exposure to food safety and standards. He is trained to test sputum and blood samples,” he said adding that the current arrangement was a “mockery of the food safety laws”.
In addition to the five labs procured with Rs 1.75 crore funding allocated by state government in 2016 Budget, J&K has also been provided two additional mobile lab units by Food Safety and Standard Association of India (FSSAI), each costing over Rs 30 lakhs. These two high tech mobile labs are also lying unused due to the unavailability of technicians.
Another official of DFCO, who wished not to be named, expressed anguish over the fact that the department in spite of “acquiring state-of-art equipment for the labs”, as well as mobile labs, was unable to improve food testing in state.
“What is the use of high-end machines if we have no technicians to run tests on these?” he asked. He said that although the proposal for improving food safety and standards submitted to government had projected manpower requirement; that seemed to have been ignored. “Requirement for manpower was projected alongside the requirement for equipment. But somehow, equipment always gets the priority in acquisitions,” he said.
Another official in the department said that the proposal for manpower creation for the mobile testing labs was submitted to government over six months ago, but the file was gathering dust. “It (manpower creation for mobile labs) should have started the moment tenders were floated for procurement of these labs. But, even now, about one and a half year later, no posts for these labs have been created,” he said.
Currently, of the five vans procured with state government funding, two have been deputed to Kashmir division, two for Jammu division and one for Ladakh. One each of the two mobile labs donated by FSSAI is stationed at Jammu and Srinagar.
The mobile vans, as per FSSAI, are meant to strengthen the country’s food testing infrastructure and “enhance surveillance activities and outreach even in far-flung areas”. The initiative was taken to launch “food safety on wheels.”
Controller DFCO, Lotika Khajuria refused to comment over the lack of trained manpower for these labs and said she was "busy in a meeting."
India's antibiotic use in animals to increase 82% by 2030
A study published in journal Science has ranked India as the fourth largest user of antibiotics in animal feed
Antibiotics increase the size and weight of poultry animals but the practice is contributes to building drug resistance
The use of antibiotics in animal feed, which is known to contribute to growing antibiotic resistance in the environment, will increase by 82 per cent in India by 2030, a new study published in the journal Science has found.
The report by the non-profit Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics & policy said that over 130,000 tonnes of antibiotics are used globally, and the figure is projected to cross 200,000 tonnes by 2030. In a decreasing order, China, United States, Brazil, India and Spain have the highest rate for antibiotic usage.
Antibiotic powders and tablets are fed to animals for increasing livestock production and its the nutritional level. Regular use of antibiotics in animal feed promotes growth, giving them higher value, but this practice is contributing to building drug resistance in bacteria and affects the health of the end-consumer.
The authors of the paper, for their research, collected information on the sales of veterinary antimicrobials from government sources and scientific publications from 38 countries. The data was then extrapolated using statistical methods for four categories—poultry farm (all birds, chicken, duck), cattle rearing farms, piggery farm and small ruminates (sheep and goats).
“It was found that penicillins, tetracyclines and quinolones are some of the most widely used antibiotics. The use of this antibiotic was higher in countries with meat-heavy diets,” says Ramanan Laxminarayan, the author of the research.
"India is the fourth largest consumer of antibiotics in animal food production globally and is on an increasingly dangerous path," says Laxminarayan. "The country has a huge unregulated livestock sector that freely uses these drugs which are easily accessible. Two-thirds of poultry farms in Punjab, for example, still use antibiotics for growth promotion. Such farms also reported high levels of multidrug resistant bacteria which can easily escape into the environment. We are losing medically important antibiotics at a very fast pace," he adds.
A similar study by Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) research in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab found that the extensive use of antibiotic supplements in the animal feed, and untreated litter has given rise to the growth of drug resistant bacteria. It said that antimicrobial resistant bacteria are spreading out of the farms because of poor hygiene practices and improper waste management.
A United Nations general assembly meeting in September 2015 set an agenda to reduce the use of antibiotics in animal feed. The CDDEP study suggest three interventions to reduce antibiotic use: limiting sale of antibiotics in countries, reducing meat consumption per person per day, and imposing user fee of up to 50 per cent on the purchase of antibiotics, which will also generate revenues, as per the report.
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