NEW DELHI (Reuters) The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has been making waves. In January, it published a survey saying that most of India's milk was adulterated or contaminated with products including fertiliser and detergent.The report pointed to the extent to which the world's second most populous country faces a major challenge in making its food fit for consumption.The FSSAI was set up only in 2008, under a new act that sought to bring various food safety laws under one umbrella. Its budget stands at $8 million, although the FSSAI hopes to quadruple that next fiscal year, which starts in April. The body also has about 2,000 food safety officers to implement India's laws at a state level, compared to a target of about 6,000.Reuters caught up with the FSSAI's new chairman, K. Chandramouli, at his office in central Delhi. Here are excerpts:
Why was the FSSAI created?"The country has been having various acts and laws with regard to the standards of food which is consumed across the country, the safety etc, for a long time. We've had about 7-8 different acts dealing with different food items."
"Then ... in 2005 or so, it was decided that we had a plethora of acts, and the implementers were also differently placed in different ministries and different departments. And it was decided to bring all of that into one umbrella."
"Earlier on we didn't have standards of the kind which we have now, for food, and to ensure the safety during consumption. So these standards now are more or less evolved after consultions, after experts sat down together."
How do you assess the scale of India's food safety problems?
"We have a huge challenge and, more importantly, it becomes that much bigger when we are attempting to reach everyone. Everyone who is making, manufacturing food, and everyone who is consuming it. That is quite a large number. The entire population."
What kind of budget do you have?
"We come under the health ministry, so the health ministry will bat for us (at) the Planning Commission for money. And we primarily are aiming in the next five year plan to upgrade our institutions. So we want to strengthen our surveillance systems, to strengthen our sampling labs, we want to strengthen our ... implementing units. If you want to cover every Indian, that's a huge task."
What are your plans for upgrading laboratories?
"We want to improve the infrastructure. Maybe we want to have more modern instrumentation: not all of them have. Then have qualified personnel, say food analysts, and other people who will be used in these labs for testing and drawing the foods etc."
What are the challenges in monitoring food adulteration?
"You can't police everyone ... but at the same time you need to have certain standards which you need to adhere to."
"We have to take on board things like spreading awareness, use of clean water, uncontaminated water."
"The further we go from an organised set-up like we have in a city ... the bigger the challenge."
Do you agree too few people get prosecuted for adulteration?
"I don't know who gave you this idea. Prosecution, as I was explaining to you when we began, is a state subject. It's the state governments who have to prosecute. You can't say that at any given point of time, there have not been enough prosecutions. It goes up and down."
Do you have records of how many people fall ill from unsafe food in India every year?
"We may start collecting it after this institution has been created. But most of it is anecdotal. If something happens, a serious outbreak, or a serious issue, then I suppose the ministry will intervene. But (with) sporadic, isolated incidents across the country, then it's very difficult to keep track. Most likely these figures will available at the levels of state governments. Health is a state subject."
"Say you have in a village in a remote part of the country there's an outbreak of, say, diarrhoea. 10 or 15 people get diarrhoea, that may make news locally and we may get an item here. If it passes off without causing too much of a problem, you may not keep account of it."
Are practices of adulteration linked to poverty?
"We used to call it, when we were younger and working in the field, "profiteering". Nothing to do with poverty. Because the guys who do it want to make money, that is all. Yes, if he mixes the adulterated thing and then starts selling at a lower rate so that only poor people can afford to buy it, then I can relate it to poverty. But if he's selling it just to sell, that is greed."
source:http://in.reuters.com
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