NIFTEM & GS1 India ink MoU to develop food safety courses and syllabus

Saturday, September 28, 2013 08:00 IST 
Ashwani Maindola, New Delhi

The National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management (NIFTEM) and GS1 India (an organisation dedicated to implementing global supply chain management standards) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) at the former's campus in Sonepat, Haryana on Friday to develop courses and syllabus focussing on making students

aware of the global developments in the food safety sector.

 

This arrangement will also lead to faculty-student exchange programmes between the two organisations to bridge the skill gap through the inclusion of modules on food safety in the academic curricula. The MoU would help develop courses that would include subjects like traceability, stock management, demand forecast, tracking of product and checking counterfeit products.

 

“NIFTEM already started a programme based on food safety through traceability and recall,” informed Ashutosh Upadhyay, associate professor and head, Department of Food Science and Technology, NIFTEM.

 

Earlier while delivering address on the occasion, Ravi Mathur, chief executive officer, GS1, said that the MoU also envisaged collaboration and cooperation between the two organisations in spreading awareness on the prevalent and emerging global trends on food safety, which could be adopted by the Indian food industry, leading to greater consumer confidence in Indian food products and their increased acceptance in global markets.

 

“A lot of innovation is happening in the field of food safety, and there is need to incorporate these developments in the curriculum of the future food safety managers, and technologists that would address all relevant subjects related to food safety,” he said.

 

He added that this would help in equipping the food safety system with corrective and precautionary measures and subsequently lead to greater confidence amongst consumers.

Hailing the MoU, Ajit Kumar, vice-chancellor, NIFTEM, said that the institute was ready to incorporate all relevant global subjects of food safety. He added that there would be a series of training programmes, workshops and collaborations for strengthening the courses at the institute.

 

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Parle returns to carbonated drinks with India’s first fizzy coffee

By RJ Whitehead,26-Sep-2013

Twenty years after it exited the carbonated soft drinks business, Parle Agro has now revealed it will return to the market with a coffee flavoured fizzy drink—a first for the Indian market.

 

Parle was behind some of India’s best known soft drink brands, including Thums Up, Limca, Gold Spot and Citra. But in 1993, the company sold them to Coca-Cola in a deal, supposedly worth in the region of US$40m, that also included a non-compete agreement for 10 years.

Brand builder

In place of carbonated soft drinks, Parle has over the 20 years built a Rs2,000-crore (US$322m) business of bottled water, fruit-based drinks and healthy snacks.

But before it sold to Coca-Cola, Parle brands had a 60% share of the soft drinks industry, and even today, Thums Up remains so strong as a brand that Coca-Cola has still not managed to make an impact on its locally developed stablemate’s position. This makes India the only market in the world in which Coke trails a group brand in market share.

Parle’s new product, Cafe Cuba, will roll out over the first couple of months of next year, and the company expects it will soon gain a 7% market share—and become a Rs1,000cr (US$161m) brand even within the first year to 18 months of its launch, according to the company’s founder.

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Dangerous dietary supplements need greater scrutiny and better labels

New bill in Congress would require more information on supplement labels and provide the FDA with greater authority

Published: August 2013

Millions of Americans take dietary supplements such as multivitamins, minerals, and herbs to improve their health. While many supplements may be safe and effective, some contain ingredients that pose significant dangers to consumers.

In our September 2012 special report, "10 Surprising Dangers of Vitamins and Supplements," we detailed the risks associated with certain dangerous dietary supplements, such as products marketed for bodybuilding, sexual enhancement, and weight loss that were spiked with prescription drugs or synthetic steroids. USA Today recently reported on supplements that contained pesticides and banned chemicals.

Current law makes it difficult for the government to remove unsafe supplements from the marketplace. The Food and Drug Administration has only limited authority over supplements, and it doesn’t evaluate them for safety or effectiveness before they go on sale. Many supplement labels do not warn about potential dangers, so customers may not know the risks until they get terribly sick, or worse.

Consumers Union, the policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, firmly believes we need to strengthen the FDA’s authority over supplements and get more information into the hands of consumers.

A new bill in Congress sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) would help consumers tell the difference between dietary supplements that are safe and those that have potentially serious side effects or drug interactions.

The Durbin-Blumenthal Dietary Supplement Labeling Act would require more information on product labels, give more authority to the FDA to require manufacturers to register their products and ingredients and provide evidence of any health benefit claims. It would also crack down on drinks and foods that are marketed as dietary supplements as a way to avoid FDA oversight.

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India aims to ease poverty, malnutrition by expanding grain subsidies to reach 800 million

By Associated Press, Published: September 3

NEW DELHI — India plans to subsidize wheat, rice and cereals for some 800 million people under a $20 billion scheme to cut malnutrition and ease poverty.

The Food Security Bill, sent this week by India’s parliament to the president for approval, guarantees citizens a legal right to food.
 

India has some of the world’s worst poverty and malnutrition with two-thirds of its 1.2 billion people poor and half of the country’s children malnourished. But the $20 billion annual cost of the bill, which consolidates and expands existing subsidies, has drawn renewed attention to strained government finances at a time when India is flirting with an economic crisis as its currency falls and debt mounts.

Food Minister K.V. Thomas called the bill a first step toward improving food distribution in a country where poor transportation and lack of refrigeration mean up to 40 percent of all grains and produce rot before they reach the market.

The Washington Post Article