QUALITY VS QUANTITY-AN UNBALANCED FOOD SECURITY POLICY

Hear this professor from Benares Hindu University who has a valid point regarding the usefulness or otherwise of the food security ordinance recently promulgated by the President at the instance of a lame duck government! He has a perfectly valid point when he has the courage to ask the "mighty" government at Delhi as to why it is prevaricating on the food safety act which is being implemented halfheartedly across the country? What is the hurry in enacting an ordinance for an ill planned doling scheme that entails drain of more than Rs 1, 25, 000 crore of honest taxpayers' money for a doubtful cause? If FSSAI, the so called Authority on food safety in India, is to be believed more than 60% of milk in the country is adulterated while millions of citizens are being cheated and injured by consuming adulterated and poisoned foods in the country, the government being a silent/ disinterested observer on the sideline! Here is the gist of the argument of this heart broken academician. 

"High drama is on in political circle regarding food security bill that ensures cheap grain for one-third population of the country. Congress is adamant for the bill as game changer and other political parties are considering it as vote bank politics. "As an academician and university teacher, may I ask these policy makers about some facts. Who will take care of implementation of FSSA, which was made to ensure service to the masses (poor as well as prosperous), regarding food available in market, either ready made, ready to eat or raw form," he said. Why policy makers are not ensuring the best services to commoner by strict implementation of provisions of FSSA 2006 amended in 2008, 2010 and 2012 for better services to every section of society. Why they are eying only vote bank that may be an easy target?"

Has he not a point in asking why the various provisions of the food safety act are not being strictly enforced in spite of passing the act almost 7 years ago? Without bothering to evaluate the impact of previous policies, enacting new acts is meaningless and inappropriate. This country is not short of good laws but it is at the implementation level that government falters very badly with inefficient management, a shirking work force and utter insensitivity! It is unlikely that such inconvenient questions will ever be answered by a government who is bent on bribing the electorate through promises which can never be fulfilled with the available resources without adversely affecting the national development agenda. 

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

NEW EU INITIATIVE FOR WASTE REDUCTION-A PROJECT FOR AFRICA

Food losses where ever it occurs is a blot on the management efficiency in the agriculture and food sectors for which both food scientists and the governments must take the blame. According to estimates being made on food losses from the field to the fork, they can be as high as 50% of the production, sufficient to feed one more planet like the Mother Earth! Why is that such losses take place year after year since long and nothing much has been done to address this issue more seriously? Compared to the situation obtaining in the developed world where excellent infrastructure and modern storage technologies are employed for preserving food, it is the fate of the poor countries to suffer massive losses in the field as well as during post harvest handling, processing and storage, the major reason being their economic handicap for investing on technology and infrastructure. This situation is sought to be addressed in a limited way by the recent undertaking of a collaborative development project aimed at reducing losses of some crops in parts of Asia and Africa. The European Union must be lauded for its small initiative in this area by banding together scientists from different countries under an umbrella University in the UK. Here are a few details about this project with some far reaching implications.  

"The 3-year project GRATITUDE ('Gains from losses of root and tuber crops') brings together 16 project partners from Ghana, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Portugal, Thailand, the United Kingdom and Vietnam. It received close to EUR 3 million of funding from the 'Food, agriculture and fisheries, and biotechnology' Theme of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). Led by scientists from the University of Greenwich's Natural Resources Institute in the United Kingdom, the project partners aim to find new ways of reducing waste during the production of food crops vital to families in parts of Africa and Asia. Another aim of the project is to develop new products such as snack foods from the crops, and seek new markets. The fact that the consortium is made up of partners from both academic and business will help meet this aim. Cassava and yam are important food security crops for approximately 700 million people worldwide, and their post-harvest losses are significant. These losses can be physical or economic, through discounting or processing into low-value products, or can result from bio-wastes. By reducing such losses, the role these crops play in food and income security can be enhanced. Post-harvest physical losses are exceptionally high and occur throughout the food chain. Losses in economic value are also high, for example, cassava prices can be discounted by up to 85% within a couple of days of harvest. The project will also focus on improving how waste such as peels, liquid waste, and spent brewery waste is used, so that higher value products can be produced for human consumption, including snack foods, mushrooms and animal feed. At the moment, growers can lose up to 60% of yam and 30% of cassava during the processing of the crops after harvesting through rotting, poor storage, transport and price discounts. The researchers hope to reduce these losses by implementing better storage and processing techniques to reduce waste and turn it into something of value". 

If one recalls the efforts in India to cut down on food wastage, an important lesson to be learned is that mere development and availability of a good technology does not ensure that this is widely adopted by the farmers and others concerned. More important these technologies need to be adapted to the field conditions, farmers trained extensively and effective monitoring ensured for the continued practice of these measures to create any impact. Till recently many agro-industries corporations at the state level were in existence to link up with the farming community for providing needed inputs for agri operations. But these government enterprises were allowed to wither away for want of greater attention and work efficiency. Unless such organizations endowed with the task of helping the farmers to practice best scientific methods to prevent losses, it is unlikely that these massive losses can be prevented to any meaningful extent.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

FRESH PRODUCE CONTAMINATION-INDUSTRY-UNIVERSITY INITIATIVES

Episodes of contamination of fresh produce with bacterial pathogens and the attending adverse consequences are becoming increasingly common in many wealthy countries and the impact of such incidences of contamination is more with people in these countries because of two reasons. First the immunity level of the population to several pathogenic bacteria encountered in foods is relatively low, making them easily susceptible to their effect on health. Second the habit of consuming fresh produce like lettuce, broccoli, tomato etc in salad preparations is a part of their food culture making them highly vulnerable to food poisoning more frequently from these sources. It is against such a background one has to appreciate the action taken recently in the US to launch a public-private research initiative worth about $ 10 million to evolve technologies which can pre-empt such risks in consuming salad vegetables produced in different regions. 

"To fund the study, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is providing a $5.4 million, three-year grant and produce industry partners are kicking in nearly $4 million in in-kind support. The University of Maryland will be working with Ohio State University, Rutgers University, University of California, Davis; University of Florida, University of Delaware, USDA and the FDA. In its news release, UMD said agriculture producers are already testing for pathogens in irrigation water, fertilizers and other soil amendments, as well as in produce just before and after harvesting. Some 200,000 separate tests will be analyzed by the researchers. The team will conduct a series of controlled experiments by region to gauge how various practices affect levels of pathogens. "Producers, processors and consumers must be assured that the good practice standards apply to their region - that what works on a big farm in California, makes sense on a couple dozen acres on the East Coast," Buchanan said. "No group's protocol will be approved and enforced without scientific validation," Buchanan added. "The science must be solid enough to withstand domestic legal challenges and international trading disputes." He emphasized: "Guidelines, standards and regulations need to be based on solid science or we'll end up with legal wrangling rather than safer salads."

The collaborative project will have far reaching implications because whatever remedial measures are developed, they will have much better chance of getting accepted by the user industry with least reservation. The industry has been using certain techniques to ensure pathogen-free salads and these also will be subject to validation independently to confirm or modify such practices. Though some industry has been pleading to allow irradiation for pasteurizing fresh meat, clearance was not forthcoming from the authorities concerned due to apprehension that the processors may pass of low quality food products after irradiation as prime quality ones, defrauding the consumer. Many countries have a lesson to learn from the above project which only can solve common industry safety problems affecting the society at large. This mode also effectively utilizes the tremendous knowledge that is bottled up in the universities for the good of the nation.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

INDUSTRY-UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIP-ANOTHER EXAMPLE

Industry-University partnership is more often talked about with very little progress at the ground level. There is a basic mistrust of the industry by the scientific community and the reason is the divergent view about the value of research. While scientists work for pushing the frontiers of knowledge further and further, industry's perception is invariably is about its bottom line, expanding the profit margin further and further! Is there a meeting ground between these two diametrically opposite views? It looks like there is a convergence as evidenced by the visionary R & D projects being sponsored in Denmark for undertaking industry oriented research work as a collaborative venture between universities and industry players. This consortium approach if adopted in other countries too, the food industry can scale new heights by gaining consumer confidence in a big way.

'2011 will bring with it a series of new research activities in the Department of Food Science at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Aarhus University. The new projects are part of the research platform inSPIRe (Danish Industry-Science Partnership for Innovation and Research in Food Science), which is established with support from the Danish Council for Strategic Research and the Danish Council for Technology and Innovation and will be led by the Technical University of Denmark. In the new projects, the scientists from the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences will, in particular, focus on research in milk quality, spreadable products, and improved quality of partially processed fruit and vegetable products. The projects include a number of companies and industry-related organisations, i.e. Arla Foods, Foss, AarhusKarlshamn, Agrotech, Danish Cattle, Danish Dairy Research Foundation, and the Research Union for Fruit, Vegetables and Potatoes. Other projects in the InSPIRe platform involve a range of other Danish food companies, ingredient suppliers and suppliers of equipment for the food industry. It is outstanding to see such a massive effort in food technology and to have established such a strong consortium in the area. We really look forward to getting started, says head of research unit Grith Mortensen from the Department of Food Science".

Though on paper such a strategy looks very impressive, in practical terms how the differing perceptions of scientists and industry players can be reconciled remains to be seen. Innovations in private sector are invariably patented so that the investment on research can be recovered over a period of time. What will happen to the outcome of these research projects and what benefits the researchers will have for their efforts are grey areas. Nonetheless the very fact that they have joined together for the national cause proves a point that given the motivation people are capable of putting in superlative efforts to attain the goal.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

AN INCUBATION CENTER FOR FOOD INDUSTRY-CAN INDIA HAVE SUCH CENTERS?

Any industry oriented research and development effort is supposed to be linked to the needs of that industry and the value of the R & D is directly related to its impact on user industry in terms of either profitability or improved quality. World over R & D institutions, especially those funded with public money come under increasing criticism because of the perceived irrelevance of their work to the needs of the industry as well as the society at large. This is all the more true in India where billions of rupees flow from the exchequer into a few R & D organizations every year with very little benefit to any one except the staff working there. An ideal industrial research set up must have adequate built-in mechanism for accountability and its working must be monitored by responsible persons with experience and knowledge of technology and industry, not by theoreticians and academicians with ivory tower "syndrome". Rutgers University in USA, though an academic set up, has been in the forefront helping food industry through many innovative and industry-relevant projects.

"New Jersey's legacy as the Garden State was celebrated last week along with the second anniversary of one of the most recent innovations designed to retain that legacy. Food entrepreneurs from around the state, including Princeton's own Twin Hens, producers of gourmet pot pies, gathered at the Food Innovation Center at the Rutgers Agricultural Experiment Station in Bridgeton to mark the two-year anniversary of an incubation facility for New Jersey food businesses. Twin Hens, created nearly 10 years ago by Princeton Township residents Kathy Herring and Linda Twining, is one of more than 1,000 businesses to have benefited from the extensive facilities available at the Food Innovation Center.Herring said Twin Hens was among the first businesses recruited to take advantage of the nonprofit incubation facility and the expertise of the staff who help New Jersey food businesses to grow."The staff they have there is amazing," she said. "They set up an assembly line that is super-efficient."Twin Hens' 40-ounce, family-size chicken pot pies were being made in Maine prior to the move to Bridgeton, she said. Returning to New Jersey allowed them to reduce their carbon footprint, purchase more local organic vegetables to put in their pies and provide work for local residents on the production line".

This is what is needed in a country like India where most of the food industry is concentrated in the informal sector with very little access to technical and technological resources and if these micro enterprises are able to make reasonably decent products, it is in spite of these public sector white elephants. Credit must go to the high entrepreneurial talent ingrained in them. If the existing high profile technological institutions, spending billions of rupees from the government, are not able to serve this sector, what is their use? Big private players with deep pockets will invariably see through their technological needs but the fruits of their efforts will be exclusive to them, with no horizontal transfer of the knowledge to others. Incubation centers like the one set up at the Rutgers are required in India through out the country with easy access and at low cost staffed by experienced professionals. Probably to start with GOI must consider setting up one Food Industry Incubation Center in each state, equipped well with state of the art machinery and other facilities, exclusively for use by small scale entrepreneurs, venturing into food processing.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com