Jan 3, 2012

Centre picks state for pilot e-project on food licensing

Impressed by its use of technology to ban spurious drugs, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has chosen Gujarat to launch project for online registration and licensing of food stalls.

The local panipuri larri or the sandwich stall that serves you mouth-watering snacks will no longer be able to get away if it dishes out substandard food.  The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has chosen Gujarat to implement the pilot project for online registration and licensing of food establishments and vendors. This, because the food and drugs administration has already been successful in using technology to seize and ban spurious drugs across the state.

Which means, the state is ready to replicate the same in creating a database for registration and licensing of unlicensed food business operators and clearing the backlog of pending licences. The project is scheduled to begin by the end of February.

Under this project, all the shops selling food items will be registered and issued a licence.

Raghu Gudal and S Murthy, senior officials of the National Institute for Smart Government — a Hyderabad-based central government agency has developed a software for online registration and licensing of food vendors and establishments — met officials of the Food and Drugs Department on December 30 at Gandhinagar. They also met health minister Jaynarayan Vyas.

Last week, the food and drugs control department commissioner Hemant Koshia had been called to New Delhi by the FSSAI to intimate him about their decision to launch the pilot project in Gujarat.

Vyas told Mirror, “Gujarat is ahead of other states in developing an online system to check sale of spurious drugs. The food and drug administration department, through its online system, can locate the medical shop where the spurious drug is available and also record its batch number. The administration can block and seize the drugs by sending an SMS to all medical stores and even issue instructions online. The effective use of technology has prompted the Centre to choose Gujarat for implementation of the pilot project.”

Speaking to Mirror, Koshia said Gujarat was selected for the pilot project because of its computer network and infrastructure. Besides, the state has a ready online database of food establishments. Gujarat also has complete list of food laboratories online and a GSWAN connectivity which is considered the best in the country.

TWO-DAY TRAINING
The implementation of Centre’s pilot project in Gujarat is scheduled to begin by the end of February

As many as 200 food safety officers from across the state will be trained on online registration and licensing of food establishments and vendors during a two-day workshop. In the last week of January, the food and drugs control department will start accumulation and assimilation of data to prepare a database.

The central government has also asked the food and drugs administration to clear the backlog of pending licences by August 5.

The state administration has presently issued 70,000 licences to food business operators that have a turnover of more than Rs 12 lakh annually. There are roughly about two lakh vendors across the state who earn less than Rs 12 lakh annually. These vendors will also be covered under the ambit of registration and licensing.

Koshia said , “The biggest benefit of online registration is that it will speed up the licensing process. The online data will also help keep quality of food provided by vendors under check. Moreover, it will have details like the location and contact numbers of the vendors. Unknown hawkers who are presently not quality conscious will also be registered. The consumer stands to benefit a lot from this new system.”

Executive Summary on National Survey on Milk Adulteration

The National Survey on Milk Adulteration 2011 (snap shot survey) was conducted by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India to ascertain the quality of milk and identify different type of adulteration in the liquid milk throughout the country. The survey was carried out by the Regional Offices of the FSSAI located at Chennai (Southern Region), Mumbai (Western Region), Delhi (Northern Region) , Guwahati, (North Eastern Region) and Kolkata (Eastern Region) with the following objectives:

1. To identify the common adulterants in milk in rural and urban areas of different states.

2. To find out the non conforming samples in loose and packed milk.

The samples were collected randomly and analysed from 33 states namely Andhra Pradesh (75), Arunachal Pradesh (25), Assam (109), Bihar (75), Chhattisgarh (19), Chandigarh (25), Delhi (71), Dadra & Nagar Haveli (12), Daman & Diu (25), Goa (24), Gujarat (100), Haryana (109), Himachal Pradesh (27), Jammu & Kashmir (18), Jharkhand (25), Karnataka (51), Kerala (50), Madhya Pradesh (61), Maharashtra (126), Manipur (25), Mizoram (25), Meghalaya (26), Nagaland (22), Orissa (50), Puducherry (25), Punjab (109), Rajasthan (103), Sikkim (18), Tamil Nadu (74), Tripura (25), Uttarakhand (26), Uttar Pradesh (136), West Bengal (100) totalling to a sample size of 1791.

The samples were sent to the govt. laboratories namely, Department of Food and Drug testing Government of Puducherry, Central Food Laboratory Pune, Food Reasearch and Standardisation Laboratory Ghaziabad, State Public Health Laboratory, Guwahati and Central Food Laboratory Kolkata for testing of samples for the presence of common adulterants such as Fat (%), SNF (%), Neutralizers, Acidity, Hydrogen Peroxide, Sugar, Starch, Glucose, Urea, Salt, Detergent, Skimmed milk powder, Formalin and Vegetable fat .

The total conforming samples to the FSSA standards were 565 (31.5%). The total non-conforming samples were found to be 1226 (68.4%) .

The non-conformity of samples in rural areas were 381(31%) out of which 64 (16.7%) were packet samples and 317 (83.2%) were loose samples respectively and in urban area the total non confirming samples were 845 (68.9%) out of which 282 (33.3%) were packed and 563 (66.6%) were loose samples.

The deviation were found highest for fat (%) and SNF (%) in 574 samples (46.8%) of the total non –conformity . Perhaps the reason may be dilution of milk with water. The second highest parameter of non conformity was the Skim Milk Powder (SMP) in 548 samples (44.69%) which includes presence of glucose in 477 samples. Glucose would have been added to milk probably to enhance SNF. The presence of Skim Milk Powder indicates the reconstitution of milk powder. Detergent was also found in 103 samples (8.4%).

The non-conforming sample in the descending order of percentage with respect to the total sample collected in different states were as follows: Bihar (100%), Chhattisgarh (100%), Daman and Diu (100%), Jharkhand (100%), Orissa (100%), West Bengal (100%), Mizoram (!00%), Manipur (96%), Meghalaya (96%), Tripura (92%), Gujarat (89%), Sikkim (89%), Uttrakhand (88%), Uttar Pradesh (88%), Nagaland (86%), Jammu & Kashmir (83%), Punjab (81%), Rajasthan (76%) Delhi (70%), Haryana (70%), Arunachal Pradesh (68%), Maharashtra (65%), Himachal (59%), Dadra and Nagar Haveli (58%), Assam (55%), Chandigarh (48%), Madhya Pradesh (48%), Kerala (28%), Karnataka (22%), Tamil Nadu (12%), and Andhra Pradesh (6.7%).
All the sample in Goa and Puducherry conformed to the standards.

Conclusion

(1) The study indicates that addition of water to milk is most common adulterant. Addition of water not only reduces the nutritional value of milk but contaminated water may also pose health risk to the consumers.

(2) It also shows that powdered milk is reconstituted to meet the demand of milk supply. All state /UT enforcement authorities may specifically check whether the declaration of new FSSAI rules are being complied to.

(3) The study also indicated the presence of detergent in some cases. Consumption of milk with detergent may cause health hazards and indicates lack of hygiene and sanitation in the milk handling.

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Consumption of Kesari dal results in paralysis: Study

HYDERABAD: Consumption of Kesari dal does result in paralysis. This has been found in large animal experiments conducted by the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) here. Consumption of Kesari dal has been practically banned all over the country since 1961. However, with demands for lifting the ban on Kesari dal being raised, the study was undertaken last year.

The experiments conducted on goats have shown that consumption of Kesari dal can result in lathyrism, a form of paralysis that affects the lower limbs. With such findings, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has now constituted a committee that will formulate a plan to undertake human studies. The committee will meet in New Delhi on January 11.

"We have carried out the experiments on goats and in one of the kid goats, there has been a `frank' case of lathyrism," Dr Arjun L Khandare, deputy director, National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) said. The experiments were carried out in association with Osmania University and the Acharya N G Ranga Agricultural University (Angrau) at the instance of the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). The findings of the experiments are important as one Dr Shantilal Kothari, president, Academy of Nutrition Improvement, has been spearheading a movement to get the ban lifted on Kesari dal consumption.

With strong evidence emerging about the affects of consuming Kesari dal, the ICMR has decided that human studies should be done to further verify the findings. The experiments would be conducted in Maharashtra, Chattisgarh and West Bengal where farmers cultivate Kesari dal.