India is a vast country and its management is highly complex requiring multifaceted talents in different fields. In the food area there is a mix of organized and informal industrial sectors manufacturing thousands of products with value addition varying from 25% to 2500%. Besides there are more than 8 million retailers peddling foods- raw, semi processed as well as fully processed, in loose and packed formats. Governments at the state and center have a constitutional responsibility to safeguard the interests of the citizens by preventing sale of spurious, adulterated, unsafe and sub-standard quality foods. But ever since independence, during the last 6 decades people's representatives have failed miserably in restraining unsocial criminals who indulge in rampant food adulteration to make illegal profits. Here is the case of Ahmedabad Muncipal Corpration which has recently enumerated the difficulties it is facing in keeping ahead of the food adulterators
"Samples of maida, cow milk, khoya, ghee, curd, chilly powder, jam and pulses, among others failed to meet the stipulated standards. According to official figures available, the percentage of food adulterants has increased from 11 to 15 per cent in last 10 years. Recently, AMC recovered tons of spurious food items in the city. The existing public health laboratory functioning from a makeshift space at NHL Medical College in VS Hospital compound has the capacity to test an average of 15 to 20 samples. It also takes at least two to three days for the results to be out. However, AMC city limits have grown from the earlier 196 sq m to 466 sq m. Within these limits, there are thousands of food establishments which need to be monitored regularly and inspected for their quality of food".
The above situation applies to hundreds of other bodies also across the country. How can the policy makers expect to monitor the quality of food in the market with practically no worthwhile laboratory facilities or experienced personnel available. Most of the existing facilities can hardly handle about 10-20 samples a day while the population can be in the range of 1 to 100 lakh! No wonder adulterators have a field day in this country riding high on the procrastination and inaction by the country's politicians and bureaucrats who do not seem to have neither time nor inclination to attend to the woes of the citizens.
V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com
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