Call it anything but food safety

By Ankush Chibber 07-Feb-2013

Apparently, India’s food safety rules and regulations are just as stringent as those in other, more developed countries. And that’s according to a proper source, one who should know his onions. 

But it’s all a load of rubbish. As a journalist who knows this industry inside and out, when I read this sort of guff, I feel like hitting my head against the wall. Repeatedly. 

At the same time, there are plenty who buy into this incredible self-appropriating myth of security - how many Indian mothers are flashing a smile of relief and reassurance now they have heard the news?

No matter what rubbish we are told, we know the reality. We are Indians. Even we don’t trust what we are given to eat much of the time. But speaking at a conference in Kerala, N Anadavally, a food safety consultant with the United Nations, reassured India’s consuming public that the country’s food safety rules and regulations are just as thorough as you would expect to find in New York, London or Paris.
And of course we should believe her, just like we should believe a cricket commentator when he lauds a young Indian batsman who makes a fifty on a flat track at home against a poor string of medium-pacers. Brilliant job that.

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FSSAI extends deadline for licensing, registration to February 4, 2014

Thursday, February 07, 2013 08:00 IST 
Abhitash Singh, Mumbai

After getting the notification from the health ministry, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has further extended the licensing and registration deadline for food business operators (FBOs) to February 4, 2014. This is the third time the country's apex food regulator has granted an extension to FBOs.

Even after a one-and-a-half-year time frame, which included a six-month extension, FSSAI was able to register 11 lakh out of the country's 5 crore FBOs and gave licence to only 3 lakh FBOs so far against the target of 50 lakh. Even though FSSAI was not in a mood to extend the deadline, the pressure from the health ministry compelled it to extend the deadline for registration and licensing for one more year.

The first deadline to obtain licensing and registration was extended from August 4, 2012, to February 4, 2013, under the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) and now the deadline has been extended to February 4, 2014.

As per the new rules, anybody who was engaged in selling anything edible – roadside tea stalls, dhabas, fruit and vegetable hawkers, grocery shops, milk vendors, canteens, caterers, restaurants, hotels and food processors failing to get licence or register by February 4, 2013, were to be penalised by the food regulator.

A Madhavan, assistant director, enforcement-I, FSSAI, informed FnB News, “The deadline for registration and licensing for all the FBOs in the country has been extended by one year. I am sure that this year we will be able to complete our targets. The health ministry will help us in getting more manpower in order to complete the job on time.”

When quizzed whether a year would be enough for FBOs or the deadline would be further extended, he replied, “No, we will be coming up with technologies and infrastructure will be developed in order to complete the procedure on time.”

One of the objectives of enforcement is to ensure that registration/licensing provisions are fulfilled and food items are hygienic, wholesome and free of contaminants.

Tejinder Singh Renu, honorary secretary, Vidarbha Taxpayers Association (VTA), Nagpur, said, “FSSAI has shown haste in introducing the new regulation without adequate consultation with the states. With poor awareness, regulators are finding it difficult to convince the food business operators, particularly mid-sized and small ones, to get themselves registered under the new regime.”

He added, “Many bodies of food business operators have been opposing the regulations from the day it was implemented, because the new regulations would result in harassment of small vendors, who would also have to take registration in addition to all other licences required from state government agencies.”

“They should set regulations not only by taking scientists, advisors and people from the health ministry into confidence, but also traders and leaders of the bodies for food business operators,” said Renu.

Click here to download the FSSAI advisory/notification.

source

Indian mums: ‘Ghee is good, refined is righteous and butter is better’

By RJ Whitehead,01-Feb-2013

An major new survey has uncovered a worrying lack of awareness of diet and eating habits by both children and their parents. 

And in a development that will startle Western observers, it found that the vast majority of mothers believe that saturated fats are good for their child’s health.

The results come from a three-year study of 1,800 children aged between nine and 18. The research took place by the Diabetes Foundation of India (DFI) and its findings were recently accepted by international peer-review journal Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism.

Researchers also learnt that while 19.2% boys and 18.1% girls were either overweight or obese, and a massive 65% of their mothers were in a similar condition. This equates to at least 15m overweight children in India.

Parents no role models

The shocking nature of these figures might well stem from the fact that parents’ awareness levels about diet are low, and many think that their child’s obesity was no more than baby fat, and it would eventually go away, the survey revealed.

Many also consider food healthy as long as it is “hygienically prepared”; and worse, 89.2%, 79.2% and 55.1% respectively believe that refined vegetable oils, ghee and butter are good for health.

While mothers might think they have been setting a good example, the DFI study suggests the opposite: while up to 92% of the kids surveyed said they had more than two snacks a day, almost 64% of mothers indulged the same way.

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Diageo faces struggle to make United Spirits pay: Analyst

By Ben Bouckley 30-Jan-2013

Two of United Spirits' leading
brands (Picture Copyright: Diageo)

The potential upsides in Diageo’s potential acquisition of a majority stake in India's United Spirits (USL) are clear but achieving acceptable profitability from the business may be tricky, according to one analyst. 

 Diageo took a 27.4% stake in USL last November, and had planned to launch an open offer to shareholders to take a further 26% stake in the firm by January 18, where both transactions would total $2.1bn.

This last move is currently on ice due to Indian competition concerns, and Diageo is due to update shareholders on the situation when it releases its half-year results tomorrow.

But presuming that transaction does go through, Ross Colbert, an analyst on Rabobank’s Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory Global Beverages Sector Team, said that Diageo’s acquisition was a clear example of “opportunities and challenges in emerging markets”.

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Beast of bureaucracy makes logjam hard to avoid

By RJ Whitehead,29-Jan-2013

If there’s one thing India doesn’t need, that’s more bureaucracy.

 As the saying goes, the British introduced it, then the Indians perfected it post-Independence. 

And even as the country celebrated its sixty-fourth Republic day last week, all the form-filling and paper-pushing–and consequent palm-greasing–have continued unabated well into the twenty-first century. 

Rather than them fading out, even more bureaucratic processes are being introduced by the day, and one of the most recent examples of tedious triplicate concerns any new or existing food products that are classed as “proprietary”.

Last month, the Food Safety and Standards Association of India (FSSAI), the government-promoted body that has recently taken over as the country’s food watchdog, announced that it would start a new system of issuing approvals, meaning that any products that are not classified in the Food Act will need to follow a regulatory “new product approval” guideline, as laid down by the FSSAI.

Proprietary foods as a definition doesn’t just cover the latest in pre- and probiotics and newly formulated breakthroughs; no, it deals with items as simple as low-calorie ice-creams, digestive biscuits and low-sugar jams. And it doesn’t matter how thoroughly a company announces its product’s ingredients on packs and in advertising, it will still need to attain FSSAI approvals.

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Diabetes on the rise among India’s southern poor

By RJ Whitehead, 25-Jan-2013

A countrywide screening programme on diabetes trends in India makes for startling reading, no least for those in the south who live in slums. Rightly concerned about the prevalence of diabetes in India, the country’s health ministry has been closely following the disease among the population, and the latest study was conducted under the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, CVD and Stroke (NPCDCS).

Its figures highlight two highly unexpected and alarming trends. The first is that the south, which has traditionally and positively led the country in most health indices, now also leads the way in the prevalence of diabetes. The second trend is that the disease has seen a dramatic increase among slum dwellers and the poor.

Rich man's disease

Diabetes is traditionally considered by Indians to be a rich man’s disease, and medical experts blame increasingly poor eating habits and sedentary lifestyles for the rise of diabetes among the urban poor.

Indeed, the latest findings suggest that one in every four people living in the urban slums of Chennai suffer from diabetes—a figure over three times higher than the national average of around 7%.

"It is a false belief that only those eating burgers and pizzas can get obese and develop diabetes. High consumption of fried items such as kachori, samosa and gulab jamun can also led to the onset of diabetes," Dr H P S Sachdev, senior consultant pediatrics at Sitaram Institute of Science and Research, told Times of India this week

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Industry should stand poised for breakfast cereal boom in India: Analyst

By Kacey Culliney,18-Jan-2013

Cereals in India is a great example of the 

shift from  non-packaged 

to packaged, says Ayton

Manufacturers should stand poised to cash in on India’s burgeoning packaged breakfast cereal market, an analyst says. The Indian breakfast cereal market was pegged at $139m for 2012, with market growth doubling over the last six years, according to new Mintel research.

Peter Ayton, global consumer analyst at Mintel, described the market as interesting as it epitomizes opportunities presented by the shift away from non-packaged, low-value goods.

“Cereals epitomize the growth potential there is in India with the shift to packaged goods. Packaged breakfast cereals is a really interesting sector in India because it’s not only replacing non-packaged items but also cooked, traditional breakfasts,” Ayton told BakeryandSnacks.com.

“It’s creating a national market in place of a traditional food type that is very regional,” he said.

“It is still a small market in the scheme of things but it is growing fast and the background to this is affluence. There’s growing affluence and greater urbanization but another factor is that the in-home market is pretty good in the country.”

Ayton noted that overall consumer expenditure in India is set to increase by 13% each year for the next three years.

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