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CIFTI, FSSAI organise workshop on harmonising Indian & Codex food stds
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Wednesday, 06 March, 2013, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Priyanka Dhomse, Mumbai
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fiogf49gjkf0d The Confederation of Indian Food Trade and Industry (CIFTI), the food wing of FICCI, and the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) organised an awareness workshop on the harmonisation of India’s food standards with Codex standards and other international best practices in Mumbai on Tuesday.
Ajit Singh, chairman, ACG Worldwide – who also chairs FICCI’s task force on nutraceuticals; Sanjay Dave, chairman, Codex Alimentarius Commission and advisor, FSSAI; Jasvir Singh, associate vice-president, scientific affairs, regulatory affairs and nutrition, KRAFT Foods, and co-chair, FICCI-Codex Cell, and Dr Vaibhav Kulkarni, director, regulatory affairs, About Nutrition International, and co-chair, FICCI task force on nutraceuticals were present at the event.
Ajit Singh, who delivered the welcome address, introduced the dignitaries present on the dais. The objective of the event was to promote the strategy for harmonisation of India’s domestic food standards with the standards laid down by the Codex Alimentarius Commission and other international best practices.
“Although India’s imports of organic products, fruit and vegetables have gone up, the country needs to implement better standards and a better regulatory system. As far as processing and import of food products is concerned, there is need to harmonise India’s food standards,” said Dave.
He said the work on the standardisation process has evolved over the years. “The standards are essentially based on scientific data and other factors relevant to the safety of food products to protect the health of the consumers. Several of the food standards have been drawn from provisions of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act (PFA), 1954,” he added.
Dave added that there is an on-going demand for review of these standards taking into account the latest development in food science, food consumption patterns, new specifications, presence of new contaminants and toxins and the use of new food additives and ingredients required by the producers and manufacturers.
“Codex standards are considered a benchmark in the framework of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) if any disputes take place in food safety and standards in India. For fair practices we need to improve standards of food safety,” said Jasvir Singh.
The process for harmonisation was presented by both Jasvir Singh and Dave. It includes vertical and horizontal standards. Vertical standards are for products like fruit, vegetables, spices, dairy and seafood, and horizontal standards are for contaminants and food additives. These are key standards which need to be added in the Indian food safety standards.
The event also included an interactive session where questions were framed by various organizations in the food sector. When quizzed about the lack of testing laboratories for food in India, Dave replied, “There is a shortage in the number of laboratories. We have different categories in foods, according to which there is need for the laboratories. The Indian government is considering this issue and it will soon be solved by setting up laboratories for food testing in India for various products including fish products, fats and oils and nutritional products.”
Dr Kulkarni proposed the vote of thanks and invited suggestions from the working group to improve the Indian food standards. He also recommended that experts and scientists from the food sectors join FSSAI to improve the food standards for a lot of ethnic products in India.
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