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Food adulteration rampant in Mumbai, but conviction rate zero in 3 years
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Wednesday, 07 March, 2012, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Irum Khan, Mumbai
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From mixing of edible oils with inferior varieties to ripening of bananas with banned chemicals, Mumbai is home to the worst kind of adulteration of food in the country. While these details are startling, what is alarming is the fact that most of the culprits engaged in this illegal activity in Mumbai go unpunished. The city has registered zero conviction rate during 2009, 2010 and 2011.
As per the details obtained by Food and Beverage News in two separate RTIs filed with Maharashtra Food and Drug Control Administration and its Greater Mumbai wing, not a single person or a company has been convicted for food adulteration in the city in the last three years.
While responding to a question seeking the names of the individuals or companies held guilty for food adulteration in different courts in the city in the last three years, the FDA replied in the RTI, “Not a single person or company has been found guilty of food adulteration by any court.”
Interestingly, according to the information provided in the RTI, there were around 1,175 and 1,208 cases running in the magistrate court in 2009-10 and 2010-11, respectively, for instances of food adulteration/misbranding of food and such others. Out of these, merely 12 cases were decided in 2009-10 and 8 cases in 2010-11. Surprisingly all 20 accused were acquitted.
Thane district registered the highest number of prosecutions in the state with as many as 1,175 pending cases in 2009-10 and 1,208 in 2010-11 but not a single case was decided by the court in these three years.
Extremely low conviction rate raises a finger at the probity of the enforcement officials to book the culprits. There is no denying the fact that the officials do file a case against a company when its food samples are found adulterated in the laboratory.
However, the evidence is eventually distorted and the court is misled through weak representation of the case after some monetary bargain with the implicated trader.
In an international food industry conference held, those manufacturers were asked to raise their hands who had never bribed a food inspector, only one hand was raised and ironically he was involved in a number of cases pending against him.
The nexus between the culprit and the authority is thus conspicuous.
“For every minor contravention, the inspector would ask for a bribe anywhere between Rs 1,000 and 10,000. The new Food Safety and Standards Act gives more power to the inspectors so much so that they are also involved in the prosecution procedures. We fear even more corruption and greater inspector raj,” says a member of an industry body on condition of anonymity. He, however, admits that corruption is more rampant among the lower rank officials and that the officials at the top are mostly unscathed. When this newspaper approached the authority, the FDA chose to blame it on the delays in the magistrate court.
Meanwhile, transfer of officers is said to be a key reason for food adulteration cases lingering in a conundrum without any decision. “Officers are transferred frequently and this takes away their interest from the cases they deal with. The digression in attention from their previous task to the current ones prompts them to dump their previous cases most of the times,” said the official.
The recent survey on milk adulteration published by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is just the tip of the iceberg. The roots are much deeper and embedded in the weak legal and regulatory procedures that allow the indicted to go scot-free even after being held for a culpable crime, and pursue his business as usual.
Another important area is selective targeting. The RTI gave an insight into how selective targeting by authorities was happening when it came to raids. The RTI shows that the FDA does not test food samples from medium scale or big companies. Small time retailers, hawkers, fruit vendors and dairy agents alone remain the bone of contention for the authority.
Attempts to seek a cogent response from the authorities for excluding the biggies from its claws, resulted in the response, “Retailers/small vendors most of the time do not disclose the names of the companies from where they get their supplies. Even if they do, they do not have the receipt or foolproof evidence to support the same. This way they are left out of the purview of the regulation.”
Selective targeting is also a result of the weak channels of information that form the basis for conducting raids. The 45 raids conducted by the FDA in 2011 produced 20 milk and milk product adulterators, nine were held for gutka adulteration and seven for oil. The rest included traders using carbide for ripening, high caffeine containing energy drinks and such others. However, a peep in the market tells us that the profile of adulterants being used in food is wide, ranging from non-edible colours, use of toxic chemicals for food, ethyl alcohol in liquor and unhygienic water to exaggerated health claims and misleading advertisements. Most of these malpractices rarely come to the notice of the authority and even if they do they are dismissed as technical errors in the court.
The rest are pending for decades together.
As of now there are around 659 pending cases from Mumbai in the court involving crimes like adulteration, misbranding, operating without licences and such others.
F&B News investigated the whereabouts of these miscreants held by the FDA and against whom cases were pending in the court in the city. It was found that for most of those indicted by the authority business was as usual.
A fruit vendor selling bananas, intercepted by the FDA last year for using calcium carbide for banana ripening, was carrying on with the business by shifting just a few yards away from his earlier location in Vile Parle, a suburb. Chemicals like calcium carbide are easier to access and inexpensive.
The vendor explained why calcium carbide was more favourable over ethylene gas. “A sachet of calcium carbide costing Rs 250-300 would ripen 20 tonnes bananas against Rs 20 paid for ripening 20 kg by using ethylene gas,” said the seller.
For a dairy distributor from the same area, life after the FDA raid has not changed much. With his case pending in the court for years together he is assured of safe business for time being and probably even after the verdict is out.
“Until the cases pending against violators reach a logical conclusion they are free to carry on with their businesses and the FDA can do very little about it. Also going by the conviction rate of the court these violators are likely to go untamed by the law,” said the officer.
Not only Mumbai and Thane, nearby areas such as Raigad and Nasik have registered a zero conviction rate. The overall picture for the country too is not impressive enough. Ten states in India had zero conviction in the year 2010. West Bengal, where 77 out of 385 samples were tested positive for adulteration, was one of them. Similarly, Rajasthan had 1,738 adulterated samples from 7,752 samples seized but the number of convicts produced by the state was merely 10. The scenario in other states is dismal as well.
However, states like Jammu and Kashmir give some hope. It registered 491 convictions against 532 adulterated samples produced before the court in 2010 to become the leading state in providing safe food to its people.
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