The Hindu Business Line : The Procrustean Food Bill

The Minister for Food Processing has tried to handle a complicated and complex job in a simplistic manner. Any single prescription would be something like the Procrustean bed of Greek mythology. The Food Bill will affect the small traders and producers, and throttle the growth of the major players as well.

The Rajya Sabha passed the Food Safety and Standards Bill, 2005, on August 2, 2006. The debate on the Bill was fairly orderly, innocuous even. Not that the members approved wholly of the Bill; in fact, many from both the Treasury and the Opposition Benches were considerably agitated over several of the provisions. Given the decisive majority of the United Progressive Alliance, the Bill had no difficulty going through, perhaps to the relief of Mr Subodh Kant Sahay, Minister of State for Food Processing, who piloted it.

The Cola crisis

Soon after the passage of the Bill, the "Pesticides in Cola" controversy erupted. There was a furore over the soft-drinks, their producers — both foreign and domestic — and the glitterati that became their brand ambassadors. Though Mr Sahay had little difficulty in Parliament, he may well regret not having accepted the recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Advisory Committee on Agriculture to hand over the Food Safety and Standards tar baby to the Health Ministry or, alternatively, to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The food processing industry has been a sunrise industry for the last 50 years. The very first Plan document mentioned the urgency of developing the industry, even when there was hardly any food surplus in the country.

A sunrise industry

Since the 1960s, India started becoming self-sufficient, first in foodgrains and then in quite a few farm products. Unfortunately, the increase in production and productivity brought little pecuniary gain to the farmer, who continues to remain indebted. The farmers could do little to promote the industry.

The subject of Food Safety and Standards does not fall under the ambit of the Ministry of Food Processing; it falls between competencies of the Ministries of Health and Agriculture. This was evident recently during the bird-flu outbreak, when the Ministers for Health and Agriculture, and not their counterpart in Food Processing, visited the affected areas.

Now that the Bill has been passed — it has not been notified in the Gazette and, hence, technically not come into effect — a look at how the cola crisis would have been dealt with by the Food Safety and Standards Authority under the new Act.

Under the extant system, the Supreme Court has issued notices to the cola majors to file affidavits about the contents of their products, considering a public interest litigation application filed by a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

Revised dispensation

Under the new system, any consumer, including an NGO, can send a sample of a drink that he suspects to be injurious to health, to a laboratory and report the findings (if the test is positive for any injurious ingredient) to a representative of the Central or the State Food Authority. The food inspector is empowered to enter the premises of producers, stockists and dealers and take samples for verification. He can also enter any vendor premises — from a five-star restaurant to a petty shop. If the reports are positive, the inspector can take action, including shutting down establishment(s), freezing stocks and destroying them followed by judicial and punitive proceedings.

The revised dispensation hardly seems to be an improvement over the present one, given that there are few standard food laboratories and the food inspectors will always have a propensity to use their often frail discretion.

Heterogeneous mix

This problem arises from the fact that a complicated and complex job has been sought to be tackled in a simplistic manner. The Indian food industry is highly heterogeneous — ranging from the roadside teashops to the posh McDonalds and five-star restaurants. Any single prescription would be something like the Procrustean bed of Greek mythology. Procroustes, the cruel robber, had prepared an iron bed on which he would make all his victims lie. Those who were taller than the length of the bed were chopped off at either end and those shorter were stretched till they fitted the bed. The Procrustean Food Bill will affect the small traders and producers, and throttle the growth of the major players as well.

Categories of food products

In India, food products that come to the market can be classified into five categories:

Food products occurring in nature;

Unpackaged food products sold across the counter or on the table;

Packaged food for consumption other than at the processor's premises;

Packaged and branded food for domestic market; and

Packaged and branded food for export market.

Each of these categories requires a different set of rules, safety standards and administration. What is applicable for a cola company may not be relevant for a roadside eatery.

Compiling a separate set of rules for each of these categories would have made the job of legislating on food processing and marketing much simpler. If the first category is left out of the orbit of licensing, the work of the food authority would have been much easier and the risk of harassment that farmers and petty dealers faced at the hands of the food inspectors substantially reduced.

The Food Bill envisages a big leap towards a modern food industry in one fell swoop. This might benefit the big players at the cost of the small ones, the farmers, the fishermen and the forest food collectors.

It would have been more tactical if the Western model of food industry had been completely side-tracked by the Food Bill. The Food Safety and Standards Bill, 2005, envisages a bureaucratic superstructure from the Food Authority at the Centre to a food officer in every area, with Draconian powers. Probably, that explains why the Food Processing Ministry was so keen on keeping the Food Safety and Standards Bill under its jurisdiction. A better solution would have been to put the Ministry of Health in charge.

The food industry in India can be characterised thus:

It is still in "eat what you can and can what you can't" stage. The modern food industry has to use special varieties of farm produce for different types of products. Development of a large number of varieties and organising their cultivation are essential for a modern food industry.

The demand for the large variety of food items is limited to domestic market and Indian consumers abroad.

The modern food industry presupposes a developed network of cold storage facilities connecting the factories, the warehouses, the retail outlets and the kitchens. India lacks the cold chain as also a network of laboratories that can give dependable analyses.

Under these circumstances, the Bill could have sought to progress step-by-step.

Model for food industry

In the first step, the food processing industry should be based on domestic units,

Using raw material produced in the vicinity;

Maintaining kitchen cleanliness; and

Developing native food products that can be marketed near the producing areas and with minimal packaging.

In this background, it seems the Procrustean Food Bill bed might prove a setback, rather than a fillip, to the food industry.

(The author is founder, Shetkari Sanghatana and a member of the Rajya Sabha. He can be reached at sharad.mah@nic.in)

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