Sunday
Reading
New Delhi,
18 November 2009
Bitter Sweets
INDIA’S FOOD SAFETY CONUNDRUM
By Proloy Bagchi
For
the millions of those who get hyped on Diwali, it was a nasty shock. Diwali is
for many the festival of lights, eats and commencement of a new year. Gifts,
mostly sweets, are exchanged with friends and family. This year, however, on
Diwali the sweet shops had no sweets of the most popular variety, the ones made
of mawa, also called khoya.
Made
of thickened milk, mawa is
extensively used for making various kinds of upper Indian sweets. The stuff had
just disappeared from the markets. The reason was confiscation that followed
detection of quintals of spurious mawa in
transit by rail and road and in various storages. Made in several up-country
towns, the spurious stuff was meant for various parts of the country.
Massive
raids followed by arrests in Punjab, Uttar
Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and even in Mumbai yielded thousands of quintals of
adulterated mawa and other milk
products. Sting operations conducted by an English language national news
channel prompted the authorities to scramble for action. From what one saw on
the small-screen, adulteration appeared to be widespread, more or less, regular
practice.
Very
candid on camera, adulterators said genuine khoya
is seldom available in the market. Whatever was on offer
was adulterated with harmful chemicals like caustic soda, detergents, etc. The
cameras picked out various nooks and corners of the so-called kitchens showing
nauseating details of the entire process of adulteration in filthy surroundings,
devoid of any semblance of hygiene.
In
the absence of any let or hindrance, the unscrupulous are free to carry on
their business unmindful of the consequences of their dreadfully unethical acts
on the unwary consumer. On several occasions, during the recent past TV news
channels had conducted sting operations and unearthed the business of
adulteration of milk products. Not too long ago, some of them had uncovered
manufacture of synthetic milk, mostly, in the nation’s Capital, Delhi, and its
surroundings.
The
business had so proliferated in and around the Capital that even the most
reputed and dependable dairies could not avoid purveying what was basically a
harmful synthetic product. Likewise, a few months ago, thanks again to TV
channels, manufacture at Jaipur of spurious ghee of a popular brand,
meticulously canned with fake labels, for supply all over the State and its
surroundings was caught on camera. Like on this occasion, a few arrests were
made. However, most of the culprits are, probably, out on bail and have resumed
their nefarious business.
Although
elaborate laws have been enacted for prevention of food adulteration, there is
hardly any enforcement – the enforcement staff being not only thoroughly
inadequate, it is also mostly corrupt. On top of that, political connections of
many of the dealers and retailers neutralise the efforts of conscientious
law-enforcers. The case of summary transfer of Sanjana Jain, a junior district
officer of Dewas, last summer when cholera was raging in the town readily comes
to mind. She fell afoul of a minister for catching red-handed his crony, a
reputed retailer of sweets, carrying on his shady business. Besides, the legal
procedures are so convoluted that cases take a long time to process and, in the
unlikely event of a conviction, the light penalties (two to three years of
imprisonment with fines of Rs 2,000-3,000) hardly act as deterrents.
The
field is therefore wide open for the dishonest, unscrupulous, and miscreants to
play with the lives of people for their personal gains. Leave alone milk
products and sweets, they have not left the spices and seasonings. Deadly dyes
and chemicals are freely used as adulterants that can cause several kinds of
bodily disorders, including cancer. Even vegetables and fruits, consumption of
which is recommended by medicine-men for leading healthy life, have not been
spared. Videos of farmers injecting chemicals into vegetables for quick and
early ripening of gourds, brinjals, etc., were shown last year by a Hindi news
channel.
Chemically
treating green vegetables and fruits to impart to the farm-fresh appearance and
injecting toxic sweeteners and red dyes into papayas, pomegranates and such
others are practices that are now common. Using dangerous chemicals for
ripening of bananas, plums, etc. is now old hat. With traders out to injure and
kill all and sundry one wonders how we manage to add millions every year!
While
the demands of an exploding market and the get-rich-quick syndrome among all
those involved in the business of raw food is playing havoc with the health of
the people, purveyors of cooked stuff are doing no better. Consuming any cooked
item away from home is generally considered risky, unless one happens to visit
a starred establishment. One is neither sure of the ingredients nor of the
environment in which it is cooked.
The
lack of sanitation and hygiene, as also use of contaminated stuff has made
street-food taboo. What the myriad kiosks, push-carts, dark and ill-kept petty
establishments and such offer is virtually poison. This is a depressing fact
when one considers the freedom with which even the weak-stomached Westerners
partake with great relish the native cuisine dished out on the streets in
countries of the Middle East and South-East Asia.
The reason is strict State control and supervision. In our case, for want of
strict monitoring, street-food is largely patronised by the deprived and the
undiscriminating.
This
unhappy state of affairs is the result of almost total withdrawal of the State
from this area of administration. As is evident, the vigilant TV channels have
done more to expose adulteration and contamination of all that is ingested as
food than any of the governments in several States. The State seems to have let
go of its controls and is not even trying to re-establish its authority to
ensure some semblance of governance in this area. Its manpower and other
technical resources are not equal to the massive job that stares it in its
face. While secretariats are overstaffed with chief and other secretaries,
there are not enough food inspectors and lab-technicians to keep tabs on
contaminated raw and/or cooked food put up for sale. With no attention being
paid to public health and nutritional aspects of the matter, public healthcare
facilities get swamped by patients.
For
retrieving the situation from what looks like a virtual state of anarchy at
least two measures are necessary. Firstly, devising a multi-disciplinary
approach, it is necessary to organise a food safety, surveillance and
monitoring system for the entire country with adequate qualified staff and
modern laboratory equipment for regular testing of food/commodities and contaminants.
Secondly, the need is to make the Food Safety Act 2005 more stringent to infuse
into it adequate degree of deterrence. After all, the culprits in this
villainous business are culpable of wilfully causing injury, why even of
homicide.
The
current situation brooks no delay. The Centre needs to immediately swing into action.
--INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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