Sleeping over Food Adulteration Act

Sleeping over Food Adulteration Act
By PRABEER SIKDAR
DEHRADUN 26 June 2008:
Food remains the basic human requirement for survival since time immemorial and it would always remain so. Therefore, to cater to the needs of the hungry, hundreds of restaurants, roadside eateries, fast food centres etc have sprang up in the state in different nooks and corners.

Scrutinising all these eateries and restaurants fall upon Food Inspectors, whose job includes seeing that they conform to the established norms under Food Adulteration Act, 1954. Armed with powers to collect any food samples, which are openly sold in the market, these Food Inspectors can be a nightmare to all food adulterers.

Ironically, for the last seven years, the government has failed to appoint even a single public analyst to test the quality of collected food samples.

Under Section 11 (c) of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act (PFA), 1954, the Food Inspector has to send the food sample for analysis to the public analyst after necessary intimation to the Local Health Authority.

Says Dr Gurupal Singh, Senior Health Officer of Nagar Nigam, “Right now, we are sending the samples to a public analyst in Lucknow.” To convict food adulterers for their crime, like the two persons who were arrested recently for trying to sell fake cheese, the report of the Public Analyst plays an important role.

Surprisingly, despite being empowered under PFA, the state government never bothered to appoint a single public analyst so far. Section 8 of PFA reads, “State Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, may appoint public analysts for such local areas…”

It has serious implications for public health because, the prosecution of those accused in food adulteration cases depend upon the reports of Public Analysts. Consequently, convictions in PFA cases are negligible in the state.

Also, forget about hoping to see a notice board in hotels, restaurants and other food stalls containing separate lists of items, which have been cooked using ghee, edible oil, vanaspati and other fats as required under 50 (7) of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Rules, 1955. For, most of these operate without a valid licence from Nagar Nigam!

Rule 50 (1) of PFA, 1955 says that no person shall manufacture, sell, stock, distribute or sale any article of food, including prepared food or ready to serve food except under a licence.
“I never knew that a licence is required to operate a food stall. So far, nobody asked me for one,” says Swaroop, who along with his wife sell cooked food items to office goers and students from their unlicensed temporary stall in a commercial building based at Rajpur Road.

As per an estimate, apart from licensed restaurants, there are about 500 illegal roadside food vendors in the city, whose food quality is never monitored by the Food Inspectors.

Says Shivraj Singh, Nagar Nigam’s s lone Food Inspector, “As the only Food Inspector in the city I could just handle 32 cases during 2007-08.” Curiously, the overburdened Singh also looks after sanitation work.

According to official sources, after state bifurcation some Food Inspectors were repatriated to UP. And coming as another blow to Nagar Nigam, one Food Inspector had passed away recently.
“We require eight Inspectors for the city but we have just one,” states Dr Gurupal Singh, while admitting that staff crunch would increase the menace of adulteration.