Violators of food safety act going scot-free

With all the stir that the recent food safety inspections and the Food Safety and Standards Act 2011 has brought in, the prosecution against the food outlet owners and other food manufacturers have been practically wiped out. Or at least, such has been the case for the last one year since the passing of the Act.

“We have not had to prosecute anyone as yet,   owing largely to the fact that the food safety campaigns, raids and the fines have been  acting as powerful deterrents in themselves. In the earlier Prevention of Food Adulteration  Act, such deterrents were not given priority and prosecution was resorted to in most of the  cases. Hence, there has been thousands of pending cases. Even now, we have more than 2,000 cases pending under the Act. This means that a large number of the officials would be involved in appearing for the cases before the court, which can now be prevented,” said Biju Prabhakar, Commissioner of Food Safety.

But a few critics have pointed out that though the campaigns of the Food Safety and Standards Department have had some effect, the new Act has implied the suspension of the rigorous sampling and prosecution measures against the defaulters in the last one year.

“Earlier, it was mandatory for the food inspectors to take at least 30 samples each month and test the same. If found adulterated,  the defaulters were immediately prosecuted, which acted as a deterrent for the food manufacturers. But in the last one year or so, after the new Act coming into being, the measure has been suspended. Now it is only under the emergency cases or filed complaints  that the samples are being tested,” said a food safety inspector from Ernakulam.

Another issue pointed out is that none of the labs in the state that tests the food samples  have the NABL accreditation as recommended under the Act, making it difficult to execute the penalty. The Food Safety Commissioner countered the point by saying that the onus of proving the authenticity of the samples rested with the accused and not with the authorities.

“The lack of accreditation will not be a factor in the prosecution. If the accused has doubts on the authenticity of the charge, the onus is on him to test the sample in a  NABL-accredited lab. Moreover, we are working towards getting the NABL accreditation for the lab in Thiruvananthapuram by March 2013. The funds for more labs are yet to be allocated by the Twelfth Finance Commission,” he said.