FSSAI ORDER

FSSAI ORDER

DINAKARAN NEWS

Hostels served show-cause notices for flouting norms

Tirupur: Officers of the food safety and drug administration have issued show-cause notices to 32 hostels in the district either for failing to obtain license or for serving sub-standard food. 

As many as 14 hostels which were served improvement notices for providing sub-standard food should improve within two weeks. Other 18 hostels were slapped with the notices under Section 63 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, and they have to get licenses within two weeks. 

The action follows the inspection of 64 hostels, including state-run and private college hostels as well as working women hostels, by FSDA officials across the district last week.

B Vijaya Lalitha Ambikai, designated officer of FSDA for Tirupur, said, “We found lapses in hygiene and standards in food, including improper storage, using expired products and colouring materials, besides unclean vessels. So, we issued the improvement notices to them.”

In case of 18 hostels, they had not obtained mandatory license for operating canteens. Officials also seized single-use plastics from many hostels. “It is important that the hostels follow norms including appointment of right cook, following first-in-first-out inventory method and keeping food samples, besides other standard procedures,” Ambikai said.

The FSDA was planning to conduct an awareness programme soon to sensitize organizations which handle food.

Festive season adulteration: Unsafe food to invite jail term, fine up to ₹5L

The UT health department will start raiding food outlets, mostly sweetmeat shops, from September 30

In wake of the festive season, the health department will start raiding food outlets, mostly sweetmeat shops, from Monday, for which four teams have been constituted.

The UT health department has set up a 24-hour helpline number (0172-2782457) for registering of public complaints.

In addition to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) regulations, UT’s director of health services, Dr G Dewan said that food safety officers and medical officers of health facilities are empowered under the Epidemic Disease Act to take immediate action to destroy food articles unfit for human consumption on the spot, to deal with violators.

EDUCATION RATHER THAN ENFORCEMENT

He said the motive of the health administration was not enforcement through strict rules but also educating the vendors about the hazards of selling unsafe food.

Last year, around 10 samples failed the tests and were unsafe for human consumption, officials said. More than 50 raids were conducted and 52 samples were taken during the time for further testing, they added.

“Seven out of 10 tests were found unsafe for consumption. They have been penalised and other three will face the heat soon,” an official of the food safety wing of health administration said. However, no punishment was granted for the 15 challans issued during the Diwali raids, and the cases are lying in the courts, he said.

VIOLATORS MAY BE JAILED

The health department has urged the vendors to comply with the provisions of licensing like safe food and proper sanitation. For selling sub-standard food, the fine is up to ₹5 lakh, and for misbranding up to ₹3 lakh; for unsafe food, the matter goes to chief judicial magistrate, under which there is a provision of one-year jail and fine money is decided by the magistrate.

Health officials said people should consume sweetmeat items within 24 hours and ensure only silver foil is used for wrapping them.

Artificial colour: a new threat to tea industry

GUWAHATI, Sept 24 - Artificial colour used by some unscrupulous blenders, packeteers, retailers, and tea stall owners, has emerged as a threat for the tea industry of the country. According to Viren Shah, chairman of the Federation of All India Tea Traders’ Associations (FAITTA), the practice of adding colour to tea is in total contravention of the Food Safety and Standard Act, 2006.

Shah said in his statement messaged to this newspaper that unscrupulous traders and packers are resorting to this deception, as, consumers in some areas of the country want more colour in tea liquor. The FAITTA and the Tea Board of India have drawn the attention of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to the problem, urging for decisive steps to curb this menace.

Tea has intrinsic qualities as a natural product and the addition of colour can potentially compromise the goodwill and safety of consumers. FAITTA has initiated legal steps against one such trader and has urged the Tea Board to join in the FAITTA effort to rein in the unscrupulous traders, Shah said.

Tea manufacturers are also of the opinion that artificial colour has become a menace for the tea industry as a whole. This practice of adding colour to tea started few years back in the South Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. It then spread to Maharashtra, Gujarat and it is now spreading to North India at a rapid pace.

The arithmetic that works in the entire exercise of adding artificial colour to tea is such – a kilogram (kg) of normal tea can produce 400 cups of tea, whereas the same quantity of tea with artificial colour can produce 500 cups of tea or more. Significantly, to earn more profit, the unscrupulous traders are also using inferior quality tea in this whole business.

This process makes tea lose its natural taste and thus, ultimately, tea loses its consumers. It is thus ruining the tea market, said the sources in the tea industry.

North Eastern Tea Association (NETA) advisor Bidyananda Barkakoty made a request to Union Minister Rameswar Teli and all MPs from Assam to take up the issue boldly with the Union Ministries concerned. He said that this new trend of adding artificial colour and marketing the end products as ‘Premix,’ not as tea, by taking advantage of the loopholes in the existing legal provisions and finally to hoodwink the gullible consumers to drink the brews of such products as tea, is harming the tea industry like anything. For, finally, even the committed tea consumers also get frustrated by such products and drift away from drinking tea, which affects the tea industry, Barkakoty said.

It needs mention here that the tea industry, which is providing employment to over two million people, is now passing through a difficult phase due to several factors. The development of adding artificial colour to tea has also emerged as one of the factors responsible for this sorry state of affairs of the tea industry, sources said.