How the safety of India's processed food was compromised by NaMo

Rashmun wrote:When it comes to the safety of many processed food products Indians are eating, they are relying on an honour system: if manufacturers assure the government regulators that their products are safe, they will go to the market, no questions asked, without any scientific assessment of these claims. 

This has been allowed under regulations that came into effect in January 2016, framed on the directions of the Prime Minister’s Office in August 2014, government records reviewed by Scroll.in show. The regulations were drafted by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, which is responsible for ensuring the food sold in the country is safe to consume. They were framed in consultation with the Union Ministry of Food Processing Industries, whose primary mandate is to promote processed food. The industry bodies such as the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry were consulted too.


Instead of addressing the procedural problems, the Narendra Modi government in 2014 decided to improve “ease of business” conditions for the food processing industry by recasting the entire proprietary food safety regime just the way industry wanted. It brought in separate sets of regulations for proprietary foods, novel products and health supplements. The regulations for proprietary foods, the CAG found, were put in place in January 2016 without consulting scientists of the food safety authority. 


The safety of a processed food product depends not only on the safety of its ingredients but also how the ingredients are mixed together – this is known as “combinatorial effect”. As an example, the first story in this series explained, caffeine and ginseng are safe to have separately, but when mixed in an energy drink they make for a dangerous cocktail. 


But, the new regulations for ‘proprietary food products’ give the food processing industry the freedom to combine pre-approved ingredients in whichever ratio they wish, attest to the safety of these products and sell them.


Previously (at least on paper), scientific panels established by the food safety authority were required to examine whether such combination of different ingredients in new products were safe for humans before they were allowed into the market.


That is not all. A manufacturer now also gets to choose the category of standardised food it wants to label its product under. For each category of standardised food, such as dairy products, the food safety authority prescribes the additives that can be used and in what quantities. Additives are preservatives and other chemicals that go into processed food, in addition to the main ingredients. 


https://scroll.in/article/863962/how-the-safety-of-indias-processed-food-was-compromised-by-orders-from-the-prime-ministers-office