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More NABL accredited labs to improve robustness of food safety system
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Friday, 02 August, 2024, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Nandita Vijayasimha, Bengaluru
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In an effort to thwart contamination of food additives following elevated levels of carcinogenous ethylene oxide in products exported to Singapore and Hong Kong by spice manufacturing companies, the Government, in the recent Union Budget, announced 100 new NABL labs.
Food testing and analysis play a crucial role in ensuring the safety and quality of the food supply. Companies in the food processing sector noted that the government announcement of 100 NABL labs will strengthen rigorous testing to maintain high standards throughout production, processing, and distribution.
Vinod Kumar Gupta, former AVP, food testing, TUV India Pvt. Ltd, said, “Food testing and analysis are an essential part of the food safety ecosystem to assure that the food is safe to consume. FSSAI has already notified 206 NABL accredited labs, mainly in the private sector, apart from 20 Referral Food Labs and 11 National Referral Labs, spread across the country.
It is commendable that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has understood the importance of the same and announced the plan to set up additional 100 NABL accredited labs. But with already so many labs available around the country, Gupta queried whether it is needed to have additional lab infrastructure.
It would be better to use the funds for the upliftment, by creating better infrastructure with respect to better instrumentation, clean and modern labs and training of existing manpower for the various quality and safety parameters. Many of the existing labs, particularly in the government sector are ill- equipped for all these requirements.
Most of the 206 notified labs in the private sector have excellent facilities and infrastructure, which is in line with the international food testing labs. "FSSAI should make more use of the same, and if there is lack of some facilities, the same may be funded by FSSAI, instead of creating a clutter of labs with substandard facilities," Gupta told FnB News in an email.
"With the growing exports and imports of food products and agricultural produce, increasing testing requirements and decreasing MRLs, the food labs need to be robust to develop and validate new test methods using the instrumentation with the required specificity and accuracy," he said.
Meanwhile, Chetan L Hanchate, director and CEO, Centre for Processed Foods (CPF), stated that NABL accreditation of third-party labs serves as a means of providing guarantee and dependability on the test results. Further it offers precision in laboratory operation and protocols followed as regards food testing & evolved results. Based on the test results many decisions can be taken up for operating food processing industries.
The additional NABL accredited labs will be evolved in the coming months. "Only concern is that, it is not clear if funds allocated are only for government or also to private labs," said Hanchate.
Majority of food industries are under small scale operations and find it difficult as testing incurs expenses which they cannot afford. Therefore testing should be based on the scale of operations. The process of getting all critical parameters tested periodically from third-party labs will become a practice. This will ensure that every industry will start monitoring their product safety & quality aspects and keep the records as evidence of meeting the standard specifications. For this the government will need to devise discounts to samples received from different scale of operators to be tested.
As regards availability of infrastructure, testing instruments and trained analysts are not an issue. FSSAI will need to closely monitor testing all processed and packed products prior to its market release, according to Hanchate.
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