How India's food regulator allowed sale of unsafe processed food for years

How India's food regulator allowed sale of unsafe processed food for years

By 2025, Indians are expected to eat processed food valued at Rs 72 trillion annually, while the revenues of the processed food industry forecast to touch Rs 60 trillion. Between 2012 and 2015, the industry tried to introduce nearly 4,500 products with completely new formulations. But, as this two-part series reports, the food safety regime has failed to keep pace with the rapidly growing industry. The first part of the series details recent CAG’s findings on how the authorities allowed the sale of food proven to be dangerous.

In December 2013, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), which is responsible for ensuring that the food sold in the country is safe for consumers, granted permission to a company called Pushpam Foods and Beverages to sell an energy drink called Restless Ginseng.

Just under a year later, scientists at the food safety authority gave senior officials a piece of information that is wellrecognised in the rest of the world: that caffeine and ginseng, the two key ingredients in Restless Ginseng, make for a dangerous cocktail that could increase heart rate and blood pressure.

It took the authority seven months to react. It was only in June 2015 that it withdrew the no-objection certificate given to the company to sell the product. For a year and a half, the company was able to manufacture and sell a harmful product.

Despite the authority’s action, Pushpam Foods continues to promote the drink on its website. The food safety authority has evidently failed to check whether the product has been withdrawn from the market.

As the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) pointed out in a recent report, had the authority followed its own guidelines framed in 2011, products such as Restless Ginseng would not have been put in the market in the first place.

The guidelines required food firms to provide scientific evidence that their product is safe. Only after the authority’s scientists were satisfied was the product to be allowed into the market.

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ARTICLE SOURCE-BUSINESS STANDARD