Aug 13, 2019
Packaged food products may soon have expiry date; discounts likely
The idea is to empower consumers to make an informed decision and enable them to bargain for products that have crossed their ‘best before date’ but are still safe to consume. Besides, it is also expected to help reduce wastage of food.
In the absence of a policy to tackle the shelf life, retailers often return the stock to companies after they cross the ‘best before date’. Companies are also left with no choice but to destroy such stocks as regulations do not allow their sale.
“Most of such products are still good to eat and safely edible for a reasonably limited period of time. Destroying such stocks leads to sheer wastage of food, while a lot of it is nutritional,” an official said.
On the other hand, retailers try to push products through various schemes just around the ‘best before date’. In such a scenario, the consumer must be aware of what he is buying and for how long it can be used. The consumer must also be able to bargain for such products, the official said.
“Best before” label is the date that indicates the end of the period in which the condition of the food item, under storage, will remain as stated. During this period, the food product is marketable and retains specific qualities which it is understood to have or which have been claimed on the label.
“Expiry/ Use by date” label indicates the estimated end of the stated storage period after which the food item will probably not have the quality and safety attributes normally expected by the consumers and the food shall not be sold.
At present ‘use by date’ is seen only in a few products like breads, packaged dairy products. India is one of the top five markets for packaged food in the world, and the second largest in Asia, with a sales volume of 34 million tonnes.
‘Consumer fora should not be harsh on small businesses’
Chief Executive Officer of Food Safety and Standards Authority of India Pawan Kumar Agarwal speaking at a meeting in Madurai on Monday.
Consumer forums should not be harsh on small businesses unless they were habitual defaulters so as to sustain economic growth, said Chief Executive Officer of Food Safety and Standards Authority of India Pawan Kumar Agarwal.
Addressing a meeting on Food Safety and Standards Act conducted by Tamilnadu Foodgrains Merchants Association and Tamil Nadu Hotel Owners Association here on Monday, he said, “Business people must take the responsibility of educating the public on unethical practices such as artificial ripening, adding colours as adulterants so that consumers can make an informed choice,
When one of the members of the audience complained that Food Safety officers who collect samples took up to six months to release results of the tests, Mr. Agarwal said the officers should give the results within two weeks even if they needed the service of private labs. To expedite this process, the Central government could have tie-ups with private labs. Tamil Nadu was one of the few States with six laboratories as some States did not even have one lab, he said.
He explained the various layers of food safety standards and said problems need to be resolved step by step. Some issues need to be discussed with the central advisory committee as well. “If we create an ecosystem for food safety, it could serve as a model for other developing countries,” he said.
K. Vanaja, Director and Additional Commissioner of Food Safety, V. Pasupathy, National Advisor, Food Safety, Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India, took part in the meeting.
Food traders seek single licence for all linked facilities
Madurai: The Tamil Nadu Foodgrains Merchants Association urged the chief executive officer of FSSAI, Pawan Kumar Agarwal, to take steps to issue a single licence for all branches and facilities owned by a Food Business Operator (FBO), reducing the owners the hassle of renewing multiple licences whenever needed.
At present, separate licences need to be obtained under the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India Act for various facilities such as factories, godowns, manufacturing units, vehicles and registered offices, said president of the association S P Jeyapragasan. He read out a charter of demands on the sidelines of a discussion meet held between stakeholders on Monday.
The association demanded exemption from Food Safety Training and Certification, which the FBOs are supposed to undergo for GST reasons. The association also sought the validity of the certificate to be extended from one year to five years. Members of the association demanded that the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, rules and regulations of 2011 be published in all regional languages including Tamil for easy understanding.
They sought the CEO to allow coriander farmers to continue with their traditional way of fumigating the harvest with sulphur, which will give a longer shelf life, till a new fumigation method is found by the department.
The FSSAI was urged to take methods to distinguish pure jaggery and palmyrah jaggery from those mixed with white sugar in the market. “With the sugar content in pure jaggery and palmyrah jaggery not meeting the standards of FSSAI, white sugar is added to them,” a trader said, adding that it was important to differentiate between them with markings.
Another demand put forth by the traders was to mellow down action on unintentional mistakes made while labelling products. “Instead of punishing for the offence, the FBO must be served with an improvement notice. Action should be taken only if the FBO has deliberately committed a mistake,” a member said.
Use pvt labs to test food faster, food safety chief tells officials
Madurai: Responding to grievances of traders that food samples collected were not being tested on time, chief executive officer of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), Pawan Kumar Agarwal, urged officials to make use of recognised private labs to test products if government facilities cannot handle the demand.
Agarwal said this during a discussion on the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, jointly organized by Tamil Nadu Food Grains Merchants Association and Tamil Nadu Hotel Owners Association, on Monday.
Earlier, traders from Madurai city had reported that samples taken from manufacturing units and shops are at times tested after their expiry date, though rules stipulate that products must be tested within 14 days of sampling.
Addressing stakeholders present at the meeting, Agarwal said it was a grave offence to test samples after expiry and initiate action against food business operators (FBO) based on it.
He said Tamil Nadu was fortunate to have six food testing labs, when seven other states don’t have a single such facility. “The facilities in (government) labs may not be adequate. But while the labs are being upgraded, officials have been given permission to get the samples tested in private labs. I am not sure why this is not being done,” Agarwal said.
Saying the process has to be dealt with in a pragmatic manner, the CEO said results produced in private labs were equally valid as that from government labs. “The only thing the labs must have is a qualified food analyst.”
Speaking about future plans in the field, Agarwal explained that the whole philosophy of the new Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, is different from the earlier Act that focussed on preventing adulteration. “The focus now is to ensure safe food standards and supply chain. But that spirit is yet to percolate to the field level. Much of the discussion continues to be about penalties and punishment.”
Agarwal added that a five-year plan created by the FSSAI will address this issue and bring to fore the food processing standards that are to be adhered to by FBOs. “The ecosystem for food safety that we are creating comes at very little cost and from meagre resources compared to most developed nations. We will become the food safety model for the rest of the world, particularly for other developing nations,” he said.
Dr K Vanaja, director and additional commissioner of department of food safety and drugs administration, and food scientist V Pasupathy were also present at the meet.
No harmful chemicals in PET bottles, finds CSIR study
The analysis found that no chemcials breached the EU-specified norms.
The CFRTI analysis, commissioned by an industry body, concluded that antimony, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, lead, mercury, selenium and zinc “were below” their detection limits (BDL) of 0.001 mg/kg.
PET bottles are safe, a comprehensive evaluation by the CSIR-Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore has determined.
For years there’s been a swirling debate internationally on whether PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) bottles, which are the mainstay of plastic bottles and disposable food containers, leach harmful chemicals when exposed to high temperatures.
The CFRTI analysis, commissioned by an industry body, concluded that antimony, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, lead, mercury, selenium and zinc “were below” their detection limits (BDL) of 0.001 mg/kg.
Bisphenol-A was below its detection limit of 0.02 mg/kg.
For their analysis, the researchers collected four different kinds of PET containers and exposed them to different stimuli such as ethanol of varying concentrations, acetic acid and vegetable oil. These were supposed to simulate the kind of chemicals contained in packaged food and drink that could trigger the leakage of metals or other secondary chemicals. They tested these bottles when they were subject to 40C and 60C temperature as well as when test-chemicals were stored in them for 10 days.
Along with metals, the scientists also measured terephthalic acid, Isophthalic acid, Ethylene Glycol, BPA (bis-phenol A) and phthalates. BPA is a synthetic organic compound and used in the manufacture of PET bottles but is now phased out after research found a link between the presence of BPA and the disruption of hormone regulation, as well as breast cancer.
The CFTRI scientists found that the presence of metals, BPA and pthalates were “below detection limit” meaning that they were below the minimum levels required by the instruments and methods employed by the researchers to detect these chemicals.
They were also below the EU (European Union) regulation norms of the “specific migration limit”, which is the maximum amount of a substance that can migrate from a food packaging material or food container into food. In most cases the EU standards are similar to the ones specified by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, except for BPA for which FSSAI has not specified standards and zinc, where FSSAI permits 25mg/kg as opposed to the EU’s 5 mg/kg.
The analysis found that no chemcials breached the EU-specified norms.
“The studies further confirmed that antimony does not leach out of PET bottles. These findings further establish that no endocrine disruption happens from the use of PET bottles. The migration studies were at most stringent conditions of time, temperature and accelerated testing environment,” said a statement from Pet Packaging Association for Clean Environment (PACE), the industry body which commissioned the study.
Dr. Shekhar C. Mande, Director General, CSIR and Secretary, DSIR, Govt. of India, said in a statement: “ Of the plastics, PET is a unique and universal packaging material for food, pharmaceuticals, water, edible oils, personal care products, etc...This project is unique, as it investigated not only the leaching aspects, but also examined the composition/chemistry of PET and furthermore, even studied the endocrine disruption potential of PET. In this respect, the findings in these reports would be more relevant than those found in any standalone tests.”
The scientists also studied water stored in PET bottles and checked whether it affected the hormone levels of rats and mice.
“The evaluation found that the experimental male and female rats exhibited comparable blood hormone levels in both cases. This conclusively proved that PET bottles did not cause any Endocrine Disruption activity if used to package water,” a study report concluded.
Thiruvananthapuram: Hoteliers ‘no’ to ID cards for workers
Thiruvananthapuram: The ambitious Subhojanam Scheme, which is being rolled out by the City Corporation aiming at ensuring hygiene at eateries, has faced a set back with the Hotels and Restaurants Association cold-shouldering the decision to mandate ID cards for workers. According to the hotel owners, it’s impossible to get permanent food handlers and workers at eateries. Also the association claimed that the scheme clashed with the programmes of Kerala Commissionerate Food Safety (KCFS).
It is learnt that the Commissionerate has launched FoSTaC (Food Safety Training and Certification) as mandated by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) for ensuring a trained food safety supervisor trained in good hygiene and manufacturing at every eatery in the state.
The corporation’s plan is to launch the scheme this week. However, according to sources, there would be a slight delay in the launch of the programme because of the floods.
The Kerala Hotel and Restaurants Association district secretary B Vijayakumar told DC that the scheme of the corporation is highly impractical. “It’s impossible to get permanent workers. Majority of them are migrant workers and they stick on only for short term and they move to other places. It’s hard to get permanent workers and to always make the ID card for them,” said Mr Vijayakumar. He said that the training programme of the Commissionerate is easier and practical to implement. “The corporation is planning to set up lab facility for checking food and water quality which is designated responsibility of the food safety,” Mr Vijayakumar added.
With the hotel owners’ cold-shouldering the decision, the civic body has decided to enforce ID cards for food handlers and hotel employees. “Every eatery including thattukadas would be brought under the scheme. Hotels should hire only certified food handlers and workers and else we would take action,” said the official.
The official said the food safety is understaffed and they don’t have the infrastructure to ensure food safety.
“They have one officer to cover an entire constituency. But we have the human resources and infrastructure to implement the scheme,” the official added.
Food safety dept seize 1000 kg spurious khoya
With Rakshabandhan just around the corner, Delhi’s food safety department seized around 1,000 kgs of spurious khoya during a surprise check at the khoya mandi near Kashmere gate early Monday morning.
The officers collected six samples to be tested in the laboratory; the rest was taken to the Gazipur landfill and destroyed.
“Every morning, people carry khoya in the flat bottomed vessel we call parat to sell it at the Mandi. When we reached the market today, there were several vendors sitting with their wares. As soon as they spotted us, they abandoned everything and fled. We could not catch anyone, but we confiscated all the spurious khoya. Only a few regular vendors had genuine products,” said Ranjeet Singh, designated officer, Food Safety Department.
The officers could recognise spurious and unsafe khoya on visual inspection.
“We have years of experience and can tell the real khoya from the fake just by visual examination; the spurious ones were whiter than what khoya actually looks like, most of them also smelled of refined oil, which is usually added when vendors make khoya with milk powder. Milk powder is usually make of skimmed milk with less than 0.5% fat, the khoya made from it is very dry and oil is added to improve the consistency. Real khoya is made by drying out the milk till only the fat and solid not fat is left,” the official said.
Some of the samples also smelled bad, were ridden with flies, and wrapped in dirty gunny bags.
The spurious and unhygienic khoya starts coming into the market during the festive season.
“This month there was Teej and now Rakshabandhan when most families give each other sweets made of khoya. The demand for khoya again goes up during diwali. It is best to avoid sweets made of khoya during the festive season,” said Singh.
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