A Cess on Industry for Food Safety and R&D: Need of the Hour

—V.H Potty

Food industry in India is starved of appropriate technologies affordable to self-employed entrepreneurs, micro enterprises and small-scale sector processing units. VH Potty suggests a yearly cess on large farms and organized sector of food processing can raise sufficient resources to support relevant R&D projects.

Food safety concerns became serious in U S A after a spate of cases involving salmonella contamination of foods like tomato, jalapeno, peanuts, etc during the last 2-3 years affecting thousands of consumers across that nation. FDA and USDA, the two regulatory arms of the government, are in need of a infrastructure to safeguard the food supply chain. The US Administration is therefore is contemplating to impose a $ 500 annual fee on food processors and growers. Though the processing industry and the farming community have not taken to this new imposition kindly, eventually they will see the relevance of such a move in the interests of all. Unfortunately in India, GOI has never taken any serious attempt to assess the need of the processing industry in terms of quality control, safety assurance and technology development.

ICAR is the prime agency that gets financial inputs from GOI for farm related development works but it is largely involved in increasing agricultural production with no portfolio as far as safety of the crops produced is concerned. To add to this confusion, there are no earmarked agencies of GOI vested with the responsibility of overseeing crop safety. safety and quality issues are left to the buyers to resolve. Only when there are alarm signals from the farm sector or when confronted with large-scale infestation or drought or floods, GOI wakes up to address the consequences. It is left to the extension workers belonging to the state and central governments to help the growers with their problems and they are also more tuned to farm production increase rather than quality or safety of the crops raised. It is time this anomaly is addressed and an overseeing organization is evolved to monitor the farm practices and ensure the safety of the crops before leaving the farms for the market.

As for the processed foods, agencies like FPO, AGMARK, ISI, MFPO, FSSTA, MMPO, etc have scattered authority to monitor food quality and safety. Though these are administered by GOI, the execution of monitoring responsibility is left to the states and local civic bodies, which never take them seriously. The quality of personnel manning these activities is abysmally low and it is too much to expect that they will have the necessary expertise, wisdom and perspectives to tackle safety related issues. If consumer has to place confidence on any safety assurance system, it must be a unitary body with well-defined hierarchical command structure that can work cohesively and with determination. It is time FSSTA is given the necessary infrastructure to do this job effectively on its own, instead of depending on the mostly non-functional state machinery. Most important pre-requisite for a sound implementation mechanism is availability of well equipped food laboratories in all districts of the country manned by qualified and trained food chemists. All the existing analysis labs should be brought under the FSSTA. They should be modernized, the personnel should be retrained and new personnel with experience be recruited. Training school for the food chemists is needed similar to what DFRL, Mysore has but with much larger intake capacity and in association with the user industry.

Food industry in India is starved of appropriate technologies affordable to self-employed entrepreneurs, micro enterprises and small-scale sector processing units. Existing players in the government funded R&D system have miserably failed the industry and has caused more harm than good during the last one and half decade by their blind pursuit of useless patents and income generation by any means. Probably GOI can do amends to its past negligence of technology development by forcing these R&D organizations to focus on industry relevant R&D projects through closer linkage with the users. Pure science research and academic programmes are better left to the Universities. Probably large scale spring-cleaning is called for with ruthless elimination of non-performers and inducting leaders with vision and far-sight.

Dedicated funds are critical to reorganize the food safety regime on above lines and proposals have been made from time to time to involve the industry as well as large farmers who will be willing to bear some financial burden on a credible system. Unfortunately GOI chose to ignore such eminently sound suggestions. Consumers are therefore left at the receiving end. They are forced to feed on foods that are sub-standard, adulterated, contaminated and unpredictable in quality. A yearly cess like what US Government is considering on large farms and organized sector of food processing can raise sufficient resources to support above proposals. One may call it a “technology cess” and even Rs 1000 per year from the stakeholders will generate large sums, which should be earmarked for spending only on the programmes beneficial to the consumers. There must be a transparent system for technology development and delivery to the users, either free or at nominal cost by the public funded technology development agencies.