Deadline for seeking licence under food safety Act extended

Solan, February 13
The deadline for seeking a licence under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2011, has been extended by one year till February 4, 2014.

There had been several representations from food business operators and nutraceutical industry representatives seeking extension of the deadline.

However, investors, including dairy units, vegetable oil processors, slaughter houses, meat processors, food processing units, including export-oriented units producing various items like honey, glucose, chocolates, sweets, etc, and food catering service providers, had to seek a fresh licence after the notification of this Act from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).

Earlier, this licence was granted by the Medical Officer, Health, of districts at a nominal fee, but now a fee of Rs 25,000 per product is being charged.

With the Delhi-based office of the authority catering to five northern states, including Himachal, Delhi, Rajasthan and Jammu & Kashmir, there is an immense rush of applications.

Industry executives had to make several trips to the Delhi office to first seek a licence and then product approvals. Terming it as a time-consuming exercise, an industry executive said they would request the authority to open an office at Chandigarh. Since the drug licencing office too had its sub-office at Chandigarh, they would press for the demand.

Since 12 Acts had to be implemented under the new Act, it had become a tedious procedure for state health officials to implement the Act as no staff or additional infrastructure had been provided to adhere to its guidelines, which included online reporting.

With a lone food inspector looking after two districts of Solan and Sirmaur and there being only Composite Testing Laboratory at Kandaghat catering to the state, the implementation of the Act was a tall order. More so as each food inspector had to take at least 10 samples from each district in a month, and the lab also received scores of samples of drugs from all over the state.

With little upgrade in infrastructure vis-à-vis requirements of this Act, its implementation had remained a mere paper formality.

Germ-free kitchens a rarity in city: Survey

Chennai: A kitchen that appears clean is not necessarily free of germs, say doctors of the Indian Medical Academy (IMA). A survey conducted in 1,400 homes across Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune has revealed that most of those surveyed don’t clean their kitchens regularly with disinfectants.
    This might lead to gastro-intestinal infections such as diarrhoea, abdominal pain, fever, loss of appetite nausea and vomiting, the doctors said at an awareness programme on Wednesday about maintaining hygiene in the kitchen.
    None of the women surveyed in Chennai cleaned their kitchen daily or even bi-weekly, just 1% cleaned it weekly, 8% fortnightly and 14% on a monthly basis. More than 69% of the women said they were not aware that the kitchen was a possible source of infection, said the doctors. Those interviewed said they used detergent powders, bars, liquids and plain water to clean utensils, sinks, slabs, towels and clothes.
    Dr Preetaish Kaul, medical advisor of the IMA, said a visually clean kitchen was generally regarded as free from bacteria, but most people were unaware that only a sanitized and properly disinfected kitchen was free of disease-causing germs.
    About 18% of the Chennai women surveyed said an unclean kitchen could be as dirty as the bathroom and 30% were aware that kitchen slabs, towels and chopping boards could be possible sources of infection.
    Most of the respondents attributed food-borne diseases to be a result of consuming food sold in public places but doctors said most cases of contamination of food occurred in the kitchen, which is the largest cause of infection after contaminated water and unclean hands.
RECIPE FOR DISEASE
E coli | Found in contaminated food and water, undercooked meat, eggs, vegetables, unpasteurised milk
Symptoms | Diarrhoea, vomiting, fever, abdominal cramps, dehydration and weight loss
Norovirus, Rotavirus | Found in dirty food and water Symptoms | Nausea, vomiting, watery diarrhoea, abdominal pain, headache, fever
Giardia Lambia | Spreads through contaminated food and water Symptoms | Bloating, fatigue,diarrhoea, stomach ache

INDIA TODAY ARTICLE ON FOOD SAFETY ACT

UK food agency raids abattoir in horsemeat scandal

 

Tesco, the country's biggest supermarket chain, took out full-page newspaper ads Thursday Jan. 17, 2013 to apologize for an unwanted ingredient in some of its hamburgers: 

horsemeat. The contrite grocer told customers that "we and our supplier have let you down and we apologize." (AP)

British authorities on Tuesday raided a slaughterhouse and a meat processing company suspected of selling horsemeat labeled as beef for kebabs and burgers, shutting them down temporarily and seizing all the meat found.
It was the first time since the growing scandal broke across Europe that horsemeat being marketed as beef has been traced to suppliers in Britain, officials said, raising questions about how widespread the practice is.
Millions of burgers and frozen meals have been recalled around Europe and many accusations have been made, but so far it's not clear how horsemeat got introduced into so many beef products. French authorities have already pointed to an elaborate supply chain that involved Romanian butchers and Dutch and Cypriot traders that resulted in horsemeat disguised as beef being sold in meals like lasagna and moussaka to consumers around the continent.
Britain's Food Standards Agency said it suspended production at the Peter Boddy slaughterhouse in northern England's Yorkshire and a company it allegedly supplied horse carcasses to, Farmbox Meats, in west Wales. The agency said it was investigating how "meat products, purporting to be beef for kebabs and burgers, were sold when they were in fact horse."
"It is shocking that we actually found this practice going on within the U.K.," Environment Secretary Owen Patterson said.
Horsemeat is largely taboo in Britain and Ireland, though in France it is sold in specialty butcher shops. While no health effects have been reported, the scandal has unsettled consumers and made clear that unscrupulous dealers in the complicated network of meat wholesalers are benefiting from selling much cheaper horsemeat as beef.
Peter Boddy, the owner of the slaughterhouse, said he would cooperate with police, while the BBC quoted a spokesman from Farmbox Meats as saying "there is nothing we have done here which is not totally permissible."
Food Standards Agency director Andrew Rhodes said the companies appeared to be involved in "blatant misleading of customers." He declined to speculate on how long such alleged fraud may have gone on, saying only that officials have seized documents — including customer lists — from the two venues and are investigating how much horsemeat was sold as beef to how many people.
Horses are slaughtered legally in abattoirs across Britain, and the meat is exported to countries where horsemeat is eaten.
Meanwhile, authorities on the continent have not established where the mislabeling of horse as beef occurred.
In Romania, food safety officials said Tuesday that the country produced 6,300 tons of horse, mule and donkey meat last year, and that it was correctly labeled when it was exported from 35 authorized plants to other European countries.
Romanian officials have said the fraud occurred somewhere else down the line.
In rural Romania, horses are sold from individual households to abattoirs, and each animal has four sets of documents before the meat is exported.
The manager of a Romanian slaughterhouse implicated in the scandal, Doly Com, defended his plant on Tuesday and tried to assuage buyers' concerns about his company's meat.
"We have always watched closely the way we work here....and we can guarantee one hundred percent that all the products Doly Com puts on the market are certified from a quality and origin point of view. One hundred percent," said Iulian Cazacut, the plant's general manager, where horsemeat accounts for just five percent of the plant's business.
No horse was being processed Tuesday in the plant in remote northeast Romania. Dressed in white overalls, their heads and mouths hygienically covered, workers pierced cow and pork carcasses with sharp knives, sawing off hunks.
The other Romanian slaughterhouse implicated in the horsemeat scandal, Carmolimp, has also denied wrongdoing.
An Irish food company has said that burgers found to be partially horsemeat were made from meat offcuts originating in Poland, but Polish officials denied the country had shipped horsemeat.
Sweden's food safety authority on Tuesday said it would test a wide range of frozen meat products sold in supermarkets to check whether they contain horsemeat and have been mislabeled.
Peter Bradenmark, head of food control management at Sweden's National Food Agency, told the AP that the agency would test about 50 to 100 samples from supermarkets nationwide.
"What's happened is alarming," he said. "Food companies are sincere and they want to do the right thing. But sometimes things go wrong unintentionally, and unfortunately, at times it's intentional."

Almost five out of ten retail outlets in Delhi have no garbage disposable mechanism: Study

Almost fifty per cent retail outlets in the Capital are sans garbage disposal mechanism, raising concerns over hygiene in these crowded places. A study conducted by the Delhi University has revealed this and noticed that in number of outlets water quality is also poor. The findings of the study revealed that the attitudes and practices need more attention on the implementation level.
The students studied the various gap areas which can act as threats to food safety. A total of 100 different retail outlets were surveyed. The retail sector, being the most visible part of Food Supply Chain has to adopt a approach of looking beyond the four walls for a holistic approach to food safety, the study has suggested. Inspite of the fact, all the FSMS (Food Safety Management Systems) are in place but their effective implementation is lacking. The most neglected areas are the water quality and the garbage disposal.The study found 78.9% of the retail outlets were following the hygiene guidelines whereas 12.6% partially and 8.4% were not following any. Only 54.7% of the lot had proper water facilities whereas remaining had no proper facility. Water is a critical factor in food safety because it can act as a source of contamination,the study said. It found that all the retail outlets were following standard practices,but the neglected area was found to be disposal mechanism where no mechanism was found in place for 48.4% outlets at all. The study recently conducted by the innovative project team comprising three faculty members - Dr Shalini Sehgal, Associate Professor, Department of Food Technology,Dr Purnima Anand (Department of Microbiology),Dr Uma Chaudhary (Department of Biomedical Science) from Bhaskaracharya College of Applied Sciences, University of Delhi, along with their ten students has studied the behaviour of food employees in retail food establishments of Delhi. The purpose of this study was to assess their knowledge of compliance with Food Safety Management Systems (FSMS) and also find out the gap areas which act as an threat to food safety in the retail market. The study was funded by Delhi University under the Innovation Scheme which encourages innovative thinking and trans disciplinary approach among the undergraduate students. The study's mentor,Dr RK Khandhal,Vice Chancellor, UP TECH University has suggested that these results can be used as a referral document for drawing up plans and strategies to achieve the desired standards of food safety in the country especially metros.

Govt policy on GM food flawed, say scientists

Chennai: More than 150 scientists from across the country have written a letter to Union minister for environment and forests Jayanthi Natarajan pointing out flaws in the stand taken by the agriculture ministry in favour of conducting field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops.
    The scientists pointed out that this was despite an expert panel appointed by the Supreme Court recommending a 10-year moratorium on such trials.
    “The ministry of agriculture has argued that our nation’s food security would be jeopardized without GM crops. It argues that transgenic technology is absolutely needed for India’s food security and what’s more, that unsafe field trials of transgenic crops were needed for India’s food security!
    Examining the food security situation of USA or Brazil, which have adopted GM crops on a massive scale, it is evident that the situation has worsened after the introduction of GM crops,” the scientists have cautioned.
    The scientists have noted that the agriculture ministry has completely ignored the important aspect that food safety is an integral part of food security and cannot be separated from it.
    P M Bhargava, genetic scientist and former vicechairman of the Knowledge Commission, who is one of the signatories to the letter, noted that former environment minister Jairam Ramesh had positively opposed open release of BT Brinjal.
    “This statement should apply to all other GM crops,” he told TOI. Bhargava, who was a member on the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee during the tenure of the previous environment minister, noted that the new committee was yet to be constituted. “No field trials can be conducted without the approval of this appraisal committee,” he said.

Extension a welcome step, but FSSA will facilitate entry of foreigners

The recent Feb 4, 2014, extension accorded to Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) for obtaining licence or secure registration by food business operators (FBOs) has been welcomed by the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT). But the body will continue to oppose the implementation of the Food Safety and Standards Act (FSSA), 2006.

This was informed by B C Bhartia, national president, and Praveen Khandelwal, secretary-general, CAIT, while speaking to FnB News. They said, “The Act and its Rules have been framed keeping in mind the interest of foreign companies which will promote packaged foods in India and prove very detrimental to the interests of existing Indian food businesses. FSSA has a number of provisions, which are impossible for the domestic food business operators in the country to adhere to.”

They referred to a provision of the Act which stated that any such FBO - institution with a profit motive or not, irrespective of whether it was a private or a public sector establishment, and engaged in the activities of manufacturing, processing, packaging, storage, transportation, import and distribution of food articles or any type of food service would be treated as FBO and needed to either obtain a licence or get registered.

Bhartia and Khandelwal, said, “Under the provisions of the Act, registration would have to be obtained not only by the people engaged in food businesses (including hawkers and street vendors) and the caterers who use food articles at social functions, but also by those who make prasad in temples or langars in gurudwaras. Even a minor lapse would make these FBOs liable for punishment stipulated in the Act.”

Bhartia and Khandelwal have urged the government to re-examine the rules and regulations of the Act, and informed that a CAIT delegation would be meeting Ghulam Nabi Azad, minister of health, Government of India, and K Chandramouli, chairman, FSSAI, and present a memorandum demanding that a joint committee, comprising senior officials and trade representatives, be constituted to review the rules and regulations.

Preservatives in food

When we buy a packaged food, how can we know about the preservatives added in it? In most countries, law requires to label the food additives. Note the ingredients and the preservative will be specified with a number rather than the actual chemical name. The most widely used numbering system is the International Numbering System (INS). How to find out what is the exact chemical used as preservative? Note down the INS number and enter into the link:

http://www.codexalimentarius.net/gsfaonline/additives/search.html?lang=en

This site is the official site of CODEX Alimentarius Commission which sets many food code and is widely used by national regulators and consumers. Enter the INS number in the tab labelled INS and click "search". The preservative detail like the synonyms, functional classes, the food in which the preservative can be used will be listed.

But, how to know what is the allowed preservative quantity that is safe for health? The CODEX Alimentarius Commission has many standards related to food safety. One such standard is "General Standard for Food Additives" : CODEX STAN 192-1995 . This standard can be downloaded from the following link:

http://www.codexalimentarius.org/standards/list-of-standards/en/?no_cache=1

In this standard, the safe limit of any food additive per Kg of food is tabulated.

All said, we are not sure if the packaged food contain preservatives within safe limit! Health authorities in several countries check samples from different companies in the laboratory for the amount of food additives present in the food. Many countries have mechanisms for the common consumer to complaint agaisnt possible misuse of preservatives above prescribed safe limits under their national law.

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