Fixing food regulation

Transparent regulation and global standards are key

The country's food regulator, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), has come in for severe criticism since it banned Nestle India's Maggi noodles last month following claims that excessive amounts of monosodium glutamate (MSG) had been found in some samples. The most scathing assault came from the food processing minister, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who charged the FSSAI with imposing an Inspector Raj, instilling a sense of fear among food processors, killing innovation and stalling potential foreign investment in this sector. Food industry bodies went a step further, and accused the regulator of overstepping the law to delay approval of new food products and of harassing processing units on trivial grounds. The state governments, too, stepped into this controversy when their food ministers passed a unanimous resolution in a conference in Delhi to demand that the administrative control of the FSSAI be shifted from the health ministry to the consumer affairs ministry.

Regardless of the merits and demerits of the specific case, the fact remains that some of the adverse fallout of the regulator's actions cannot be overlooked. Some 700 new food products are said to have been awaiting pre-launch approval from the FSSAI for over a year because of the cumbersome and lengthy approval procedures. This problem is rooted basically in the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, which neither defines "product approval" nor lays down any norms for this purpose - thus giving the FSSAI the freedom to evolve its own procedures. In addition, consignments of imported food products often remain stuck at the ports for long for want of clearance by the FSSAI. In many cases, permission is withheld on the flimsiest of grounds - because the labelling of the packages does not conform to arbitrary norms specified by the FSSAI, which differ from the widely accepted global standards.

Such a state of affairs, particularly the differences between the food regulator and the food processing ministry, does not bode well for a sector which, after prolonged infancy, has finally moved towards faster growth, clocking 8.4 per cent annual growth in recent years. Value-addition and waste reduction of farm products, especially perishables like vegetables and fruits, are imperative to protect the interests of both producers and consumers. At present, hardly two per cent of the country's total vegetable and fruit output is processed into value-added and shelf life-enhanced products. This is minuscule compared with countries like Malaysia and Thailand, where upwards of 80 per cent of perishable farm produce is processed to avert spoilage and meet the ever-changing tastes and needs of the consumers.

Thankfully, there is a ray of hope that some of these contentious issues may soon be resolved. The FSSAI has reportedly finalised about 12,000 standards for food ingredients and additives which, it is claimed, are in line with the global safety and quality standards. If so, once enforced, food companies may not need to seek product approvals if they follow these standards. The option of random sampling for quality assessment of the packaged products would always be available to the FSSAI to ascertain compliance. Hopefully the principles of minimum interference and global benchmarking will be considered paramount.