Better food safety will help in exports

The issue of food safety in India has always been neglected by the government and this attitude has often proved detrimental to the national economy as well as public health. The vested interests in the industry and government departments have conveniently preferred to brush the issue under the carpet for a long time since Independence.

But with the focus now on increasing national wealth to drive public welfare schemes and to address the issue of poverty, not to speak of the claims to make India one of the developed countries in about two decades’ time, the issue of rejection of exported items mainly food and other edibles due to their poor food safety standards has now taken centre stage.

 Let’s understand the importance of food safety norms in terms of economics. According to an estimate between July 2006 and June 2007, India suffered a loss of a whopping $1.2 billion in export earnings due to the rejection of a startling 1,782 food consignments to the United States, one of the developed countries with stringent food safety rules.

Combining these figures with rejections by European countries and other food safety-sensitive markets of the world, the extent of loss to the national exchequer can be anybody’s guess.

 The rejection of such huge exported food items bearing Indian brand names is largely attributed to the tracing of pesticides residues, unhygienic processing of milk products (a reason India’s popular sweets are unable to make a dent in the global market), the presence of salmonella in black pepper and shrimps, colour additives and dirt in food items, etc.

So much so that products manufactured by our popular brands like Haldiram’s, Britannia, or Parle too reportedly faced rejection of their shipments by the USA FDA in the recent past. Eggplant, mangoes, snake gourd, bitter gourd, and taro accounted for a large number of rejected items in the 2012- 2013 period.

Very recently, fruits like mangoes, table grapes, okra, peanuts, curry leaves, chilies, and tamarind, too have joined the list of rejects. Besides these, marine products like shrimps, and prawns too were blacklisted from entering the developed countries’ markets due to the presence of higher than approved levels of chemical residues, pests and bacterial infestation.

Despite being a big producer of milk, India is not able to export milk products and ready-to-eat ethnic milk sweets, all because of unhygienic animal rearing conditions and increased chemical feeds.

At the root of the problem has been the government’s archaic almost non-existent traceability mechanism for food products and processing conditions. Alarmed by the situation, in 2022, the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) devised a system to monitor exports as part of the country’s first traceability mechanism for farm produce that can be tracked digitally “from the farm to the fork”.

With this, the substandard batches of export items can be traced to their source and recalled. This has made damage control faster and more effective.

 The packaging units too have been advised to ensure that there is no contamination. But APEDA head S Dave says this system of tracing food items for contamination or other harmful substances or chemicals should be enforced in the case of domestic products as well.

Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), India’s nodal organization for food safety, has decided to train 25 Lakh food business operators in the coming three years in food safety norms.

Recently, the FSSAI also released a manual of methods of analysing foods like fish and fish products, cereal and cereal products, and beverages such as tea, coffee, and chicory among other things. With the government coming out with its latest slogan ‘Food Quality is Wellness’ one can only hope that people in India will soon be able to enjoy contamination-free food on their plates like their counterparts in the developed world.

That is, by the way, not too much to ask, and should happen without any further delay.