A new food law

The Food Safety and Standards Bill, 2005, introduced in the Lok Sabha but not passed in the just concluded monsoon session, has been awaited for long. It has taken over a decade of deliberations by several committees and work by a group of ministers to draft this integrated law.

At present, several ministries have been governing the food sector on the strength of a score of laws and orders. This has prevented the food processing sector from growing to its real potential.

Foreign direct investment, too, has not been forthcoming to the desired extent, though the domestic market for processed foods has been growing at a healthy 15 per cent a year. There have, therefore, been a lot of expectations from the new food statute. It remains to be seen to what extent the measures proposed in the Bill will fulfill these expectations.

Prima facie, the Bill has several praise-worthy features, but irritants are not missing either. Significantly, the enactment of this law would spell the automatic repeal of at least nine existing/outmoded laws, including the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, and almost an equal number of orders issued under the Essential Commodities Act.

Besides, seven other laws dealing with food will get modified and aligned to the provisions of the new statute. Equally significant is the provision for setting up a single body called the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India to put in place food standards and regulate manufacturing, import, processing, distribution and sale of food products.

This Authority will fix limits on the use of food additives, crop contaminants, pesticide residues, heavy metals and the like in food substances, in accordance with global norms.

This will be implemented by promoting adherence to total quality management systems, including ISO-9000, ISO-14000, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), good manufacturing practices (GMP) and good hygienic practices (GHP), all necessary for food processing industries to take on global competition.

However, there is also cause for skepticism over the proposed law's ability to make things easier for industry. This is due largely to its provisions regarding mandatory licensing and registration of food businesses, and enforcement of the law through the existing food inspectors, who will be bossed over by the proposed food safety commissioners.

This might lead to perpetuation of the licence-inspector raj. Such a danger seems real also because the Bill stipulates the toughest possible quality standards for food items when the infrastructure of laboratories that can do sensitive and detailed testing of this kind simply does not existent.

Besides, the retrograde Essential Commodities Act continues to be on the statute book though some of its provisions concerning food businesses will get transferred to the new law.

This Act is liable to be used by state governments for re-issuing the kinds of orders that are sought to be repealed under the new Central law. Thus, what is needed is to put the Bill to scrutiny by the public, especially by the concerned industry and consumer bodies, before passing it in the next winter session of parliament.