Check quality of drinking water in hotels, FSSAI told

Current law mandates check of ‘packaged drinking water’

New Delhi, dhns: Lawmakers have asked the food safety regulator to carry out periodic inspection of ordinary drinking water being served in hotels, restaurants and other eating joints to ensure that potable water is being served to the customer.

The food safety law currently mandates the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to check the quality of only “packaged drinking water” leaving the non-bottled drinking water being served in small and medium-sized restaurants outside the quality net.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health has now directed the FSSAI to undertake timely inspection of the water provided in the food business premises such as eating outlets to ensure that the joints provide clean drinking water to its customers.

In its report submitted in both Houses of the Parliament on Thursday, the panel suggested changing the definition of food to include potable water as well so that food business operators couldn’t take advantage of the loophole in the law.

The committee, headed by Samajwadi Party leader Ramgopal Yadav, also asked the regulator to have a stringent approach on the use of food colour.

“The use of food dyes has to be regulated because time and again, the food dyes have been linked to health problems. Excessive use of colouring matter in food may cause an allergic reaction to some people or hyperactivity in sensitive children,” it said in the report.

The health ministry’s Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme shows food poisoning is one of the commonest outbreaks reported in 2017 apart from the acute diarrhoeal disease. While there were 312 cases of the diarrhoeal diseases out of 1,649 disease outbreaks reported till the third week of December 2017, as many as 242 episodes were due to food poisoning. The incidences diarrhoea and food poisoning are high in places where food is cooked in bulk such as canteens, hotels and wedding venues.

Health ministry officials said food-borne illnesses were a greater health burden comparable to malaria, HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis. The root cause is unsafe, contaminated food and water. Because of poor food safety standards, the government in 2006 brought the Food Safety and Standards Act to replace nearly a dozen existing regulations. The authority was set up two years later and the law became operational from August 2011.

Seven years later, the Parliamentarians recognised there were flaws in the law that need to be corrected, the authority needed to staffed better and testing infrastructure required a boost.