Food Safety Laboratory With FSSAI On The Road To Excellence

GUWAHATI: The road to excellence seems to have been paved for the century-old food testing laboratory (State Public Health Laboratory, Assam or SPHLA) with the FSSAI (Food Safety Standard Authority of India) sanctioning Rs 10 crore to upgrade it so as to enable it to maintain even micro-level food safety standard. The good news is that Rs 7.20 crore of the sanctioned Rs 10 crore has already been released.

Set up by British India in 1920 in Shillong, SPHLA is one of the oldest such laboratories in India. However, in 1973 the laboratory was shifted to the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) from where it was shifted to its present location at Bamunimaidam, Guwahati.

Apart from Assam, four other States – Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim – have been depending on this laboratory for maintaining food safety standards. Departments like Customs, NF Railway etc also depend on this laboratory for getting their seizures examined and analysed.

Talking to The Sentinel, a top-level official of the SPHLA said, “In fiscal 2018-19, the FSSAI granted Rs 10 crore for upgrading SPHILA, and Rs 7.20 crore of it has already been released. With the released funds we’re importing three sophisticated machines – LC-MS-MS (Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry), GS-MS-MS (Gas Chromatography Triple Quadropole Mass Spectrometry) and ICP-MS Inductivity Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry – are being imported from Germany and the USA. The installation of such machines will enable us to examine and analyse micro-level pesticides present in food materials.

“Because of the absence of such state-of-the art machines, we’ve not been able to conduct a number of micro-level tests that are mandatory under the Food Safety and Standard Act, 2006. We’re conducting tests of around 1,000 cases annually.”

The official further said that the laboratory is going to get accreditation from the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories. Only five of the 77 such government laboratories in the country are accredited ones.