Shabir Ahmad Food Safety
For a state faring fairly well when it comes to most indicators of quality of life – be it sex ratio, infant mortality rate, or even education, it seems rather unsettling that the authorities took as long as up to 2018 to allow for the establishment of a full-time Commissionerate for Food Safety and Standards. The establishment was a follow up to the suo motu cognizance that the state judiciary took in response to judicial activism which, again, featured way later than it ideally should have.
The most evident long-term effect of the continuation of the Commissionerate of Food Safety is the much needed democratization of Food Safety and Standards as a whole. One simply cannot overlook the paramount role food safety plays in our everyday lives – it is via food safety that the consumer stands protected from the risk of food borne illnesses. Besides, we as consumers also stay safe from the risks of health-related conditions ranging from allergy to death, propagated by unfit food.
It is under the surveillance of Food Safety and Standards that the food processing establishments are shielded from public recalls, which often result in financial losses due to unsafe products. A product recall is the process of retrieving defective and/or potentially unsafe goods from consumers while providing those consumers with compensation. Further, other issues due to unsafe products which can impact a business include rejected products, possible lawsuits and business closure by the public health authorities due to reports of unsafe product sold to the general public. Hence, both the possibility of such costly procedures and the supposition that Food Safety laws tend to have a consumer bias stand eliminated if the stipulated standards are conformed to, and procedures followed like a bible.
As for the democratization of Food Safety and Standards, yours faithfully feels compelled to say that when the Governor of the State is to eat at some place, it is mandatory for a Food Safety Officer (FSO) as well as a Food Analyst to be present. This is a mandate in the shameful backdrop that even now, there is a scarcity of food testing laboratories in the state.
The surest and the easiest democratization is to have food testing laboratories in every district, if not every area. However, there is a major hurdle in the way of this: the meager budgetary allocation for the Department of Food Safety and Standards. This miscalculated allocation could also be due to the fact that in our State, Food Safety and Standards isn’t an autonomous ministry.
Rather, it falls under the ambit of the parent Ministry of Health and Medical Education. If the authorities do not deem it fit to allocate an entire ministry to an aspect as important as the morsels that enter our systems, be it so.
Notwithstanding this incomprehensible mentality, there still is a bare minimum infrastructural requirement for said entity to exist. But, leave alone man-power, the situation at the start of the tenure of the State’s first Commissionerate Food Safety and Standards was such that there wasn’t even a formally allotted work space/office where from the department could carry out its functions! This is sadder still, when we consider that food safety and healthy diets are critical in the context of India’s high burden of food-borne diseases, under-nutrition, micro-nutrient deficiencies and growing incidence of cancer, obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which in all account for 60% of the deaths in the country.
On a merrier note, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India recently awarded an award and a certificate of achievement “for achieving the status of one of the states which are Catching Up in State Food Safety Index (SFSI) in recognition of their overall performance on various parameters of Food Safety during the assessment period 01-04-2018 to 31-01-2019 (sic).” Interestingly, this time frame exactly spans the tenure of the first Commissioner Food Safety in our state, Dr. Abdul Kabir Dar.
The State Food Safety Index is a dynamic quantitative and qualitative benchmarking model that provides an objective framework for evaluating food safety across all the states in the country. Additionally, during the course of said time period, J&K was also awarded and appreciated the Best Performing State in the Swasth Bharat Yatra 2018, under the category ofDifficult Terrain and Hilly States.
It is plain to see that if the infrastructure wasn’t in such a poor state then, our state would have made it to the top of the list of states faring well in Food Safety. For now, we are merely “Catching Up”, and it hurts to think of all the things one could be. Even then, the stipulated time period has given us common citizens much to be proud of.
That pride originates as a result of the overwhelming statistics we have for the tenure of Dr. Kabir’s commisioner-ship. In that fiscal year, 6792 licenses and 88727 licenses and 88727 registrations to various Food Business Operators (FBOs) were issued from which Rs. 53,349,610 have been realised as revenue. Additionally, the Commissionerate, in collaboration with FSSAI, NASVI, Nestle India Pvt. Ltd. and various other stakeholders, has organized various programmes viz. FoSCoRIS (Food Safety Compliance through Regular Inspection), FoSTaC (Food Supervisors Training Certification), SFVT (Street Food Vendors Training) as well as NABL Accreditation Training for food laboratory staff.
These have ensured a robust regime of capacity building. Further, for the very first time, print as well as electronic media bore alerts, prohibition orders as well as food safety advisories for even the common man to stay abreast with what Food Safety and Standards actually entails.
The notifications included things that you and me could very well understand and implement with ease – things like Food Safety dos and don’ts, restriction on using newspaper as harmful material, advisory on food colors and the like. Another highlight of this period so appreciated by the GoI is the mobile food testing vans (which played a pivotal role in facilitating the large scale National Milk Safety and Quality survey conducted in the state), stationed in both Jammu and Kashmir along with the constitution of the first ever State Level Advisory Committee keeping in tune with the sub-regulation 2.1.15 of the Food Safety and Standards (Licensing and Registration of Food Businesses) Regulation, 2011 – better late than never!
Just as the state populace began to register these positive additions and changes to the status quo of the Food Safety arena (while the Government of India kept going its assessment, only to be impressed), the Commissioner for Food Safety and Standards, Dr. Kabir was transferred.
This did not stop here. In fact the department has further modified the rules violating the food safety standards parameters to demean the powers of department.
Against the norms of FSS, the state government constituted the Advisory committee headed by Principal Secretary Health contrary to the guidelines laid down by the Government of India. According to the guidelines, the advisory committee to monitor the functioning of department must be headed by the Chief Secretary while as Commissionerate food safety shall serve as its member.
The aim of constituting the high power advisory committee was to expand the role of department given to its sensitivity. However, the decision of elevating the Principal Secretary as its chairman not only undermine the significance of department but miserably restricted its role and scope of improving the food standards in state. This apparently seems to have been done to secure the unimaginably personal interests at the larger costs of state.
Surely, to get an area to realise its truest potential, the leader needs time, and that it seems was too precious for the authorities to give. Perhaps these hasty transfers are nothing but the spill-overs and residues of the designation of Commissioner, Food Safety and Standards being an erstwhile additional charge. Things have changed, but the mindset hasn’t. And that is where change is needed most.
