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Ministry, FSSAI at loggerheads over import of damaged, impure food grains
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Thursday, 02 February, 2012, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Akshay Kalbag, Mumbai
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If the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), the country's food regulatory body, is to be believed, the ministry of consumer affairs, food & public distribution is not concerned about the health of the people of India and continues to back the import of food grains that are not of good quality.
An importer from New Delhi, who spoke to FnB News via telephone on the strict condition of anonymity, said, “We cannot pinpoint who is responsible for the import of damaged food grains and those that contain hazardous foreign matter and impurities, but yes, that is rampant here.”
“When quizzed about it, the importers of these sub-standard food grains offer the flimsy excuse that India is not producing enough of the same. It is not that the farmers in this country cannot produce adequate and high-quality food grains,” he pointed out.
The ministry, backed by a group of influential importers, had appealed to the FSSAI to consider relaxing the existing norms for the import of food grains (including wheat, maize, jowar and bajra) and pulses, although they contained extraneous matter, including animal and mineral matter.
In an attempt to convince the FSSAI to change its stand on the matter, which eventually proved futile as well, the ministry and importers stated that at times, during the unloading of stocks, mud and other impurities get mixed with the food items.
“This makes it impure. The testers pick up such samples and reject the entire stock on that basis, which is not prudent. Not only does it highlight the acute shortfall in our food grain poduction, but it also causes us considerable financial loss,” the importer said.
However, the FSSAI, citing health reasons, turned it down, much to their dismay. The New Delhi-based importer defended, “It was right on the part of the authority to refuse to pay any heed to their request for leniency in implementing the standards.”
“After all, the FSSAI has to set a good example. It is the body responsible for making sure every food imported into the country is safe and is in accordance with the set of norms prescribed under the Food Safety Standards (FSS) Regulation 2011,” he said.
Anyway, as V N Gaur, chief executive officer, FSSAI, had pointed out, the fact was clearly spelled out by the authority to the ministry and importers: only Parliament was authorised to relax the norms, which it would do on a case-by-case basis if it deemed it necessary.
The importers were given a chance to improve the quality of the imported food grains. They were told that they would have to remove the foreign matter, separate the good grains from the damaged ones, clean and sort them under the watchful eyes of Customs officials in a Customs-bound area, so that the consignment conforms to the standards.
The FSSAI, after all, took into account the problems importers across India face – the operational issues, the inconvenience they suffer and the need to import certain types of food grains which are not produced enough in the country.
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