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Food safety 2030 - Need for intervention across value chain
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Thursday, 12 January, 2023, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Ashwani Maindola, New Delhi
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Food safety in recent times has become a major subject that concerns the health of the general public as well as affects ease of doing business in a developing economy like India. As India aspires to play a major role in the world economy by 2030, the food industry as a prime sector needs policies that would help in transitioning from a developing nation to a developed global hub in terms of food supplies, which are of best quality.
According to experts, in India, there is a major issue related to wide variations in food safety and standards, supply chain sustainability and traceability, and therefore there is a need for a wide intervention across the value chain– from production to distribution to processing and then to end-consumers.
“It is important to focus on quality, food safety standards and sustainable food supply chains. Unless there is a sustainable food supply chain it will be difficult to export to key markets like the EU, which has set up targets and goals for sustainable food supply chains. In India, many policies have been put in place by the Centre and state governments to ensure a sustainable and safe food ecosystem. However, there are implementation gaps and gaps in monitoring of the policies. There are difficulties in ensuring food safety standards in the unorganised sector which constitute more than 80 per cent of the processed food industry. There is a need for monitoring of spurious products, and we need to have a proper technology based recall system in case of any food safety issue,” opined Prof. Arpita Mukherjee of ICRIER.
Experts also feel that the current food safety ecosystem in India is beneficial for consumers primarily and enforcement agencies. Industries too stand to benefit from the safety ecosystem as they could earn trust for themselves through high-quality products, thereby benefiting monetarily.
About major challenges India might face by 2030, Ashwin Bhadri, CEO, Equinox Labs, said, “Amongst major challenges include degrading quality of agri produce: This issue arises mainly due to loss of fertility in soil and overuse of chemical-loaded fertilisers resulting in poor quality harvest, hence affecting the final food products. It could also lead to many foodborne diseases due to the presence of chemicals & contaminants and secondly lack of food safety awareness: A lack of awareness about new techniques and technologies is the driving force behind the challenges of the food safety department. India is leaps behind the international markets with respect to technology.”
Food law expert and Advocate on Record Supreme Court of India Dr Charu Mathur, meanwhile, stated that as the world has shifted to Work from Home (WFH) setup and ordering food is becoming common, this has led to mushrooming of home-made food suppliers and added another aspect of food safety.
“Another and persistent area of concern is cold chain supply. In India, the cold chain is inevitably broken and this results in food contamination. This is a basic challenge that India needs to meet by 2030. Genetically Modified food is something that FSSAI has to ring in. One devastating and not much studied after- effect of Covid-19 hospitalisation is disposal of untreated medical waste in various water bodies. This availability of antibiotics in water is making the entire food chain contaminated. This is something that needs to be nipped in the bud. Though this is not an exclusive domain of FSSAI, but FSSAI needs to work in harmony with other agencies to ensure that the food is safe. FSSAI must continue its advocacy campaign to make citizens aware of the quality of food as well while the labels need to be more accurate and more informative,” said Mathur.
Another area of the food safety ecosystem is food import. India imports a large volume of food products. While food importers have expectations that their consignment is cleared in the shortest possible time, the food authority has the obligation to make sure that no unwanted incident is reported from imported food items.
Amit Lohani, founder & director, Forum of Indian Food Importers (FIFI) stated, “We as the Forum of Indian Food Importers are committed to supporting the agriculture, food, and beverage sector, in particular, observing both trade development and food safety aspects. The food safety Vision 2030 offers an opportunity for all stakeholders to work together to ensure technological advancement, enhancing India's story, continued updation, and effective implementation of food safety regulations.
Addressing the food safety ecosystem under Vision 2030 will remain imperative to boost Indian business with a spotlight on bilateral trade. FIFI will continue to work with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) with an aim to achieve a more holistic environment by lowering procedural market access barriers faced by Indian businesses. FIFI stakeholders will continue to share their experiences on regulatory requirements to avoid trade disruptions. While as an association we recognise the diversity of Indian commerce and warmly welcome the progressive changes introduced by the authorities such as permission to rectify labelling deficiency at the custom bonded warehouse.”
Lohani suggested that to enable businesses to widen their footprint in a rising global economy, FIFI strongly advocated the need to introduce more ease of running business reforms. Some of the pending concerns, for which FIFI has requested immediate intervention are –
On-going 100 per cent testing and sampling for international goods coming into Indian commerce;
FSSAI subsumes sampling and testing fees, which is a huge burden on the businesses, that is eventually translated to the end-consumers. A rough estimate indicates that nearly Rs 50 crore of sample fees have been paid by the Indian business since the increase of the testing fees from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 per sample;
Furthermore, while on one hand agencies like APEDA are committed to promoting exports of organic products from India but, do not issue a clarification on the import procedure – it relays a strong impression that we as a country are unwilling to support bilateral trade. In the current era when the world is shifting towards healthful and chemical-free eating it is necessary to give Indian consumers choice from the global grocery basket.
“Food safety Vision 2030 gives us an opportunity to take forward collaboration and share best practices enabling us to bring India to the forefront of global trade and investment destinations. The Forum of Indian Food Importers remains committed to supplement the Government of India authorities in their core objective and towards creating positive reforms for the sector, covering both technical and non-technical market access barriers as faced by the industry,” said Lohani.
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