Govt to set up Food Authority, labelling to ensure food quality

New Delhi, Apr 10 (UNI) The government is soon going to set up a National Food and Drug Regulatory Authority to ensure quality of food products in the country and also ensure labelling of all processed food items, Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss today said.

Inaugurating the first International Food Regulatory Summit 2007 organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry and Food and Agriculture Organisation here, Dr Ramadoss said that the government is striving to ensure that food safety and regulatory mechanism were of global standards so as to ensure free trade of food items within different countries under WTO agreement.

For the strict implementation and enforcement of the newly enacted Food Safety and Standards Act, a Food Commissioner would be appointed within the next four months, he said. The Cabinet Secretary is in the process of selecting a qualified person for the post of the Commissioner who along with four-five other members would professionally manage the Commission and ensure the proper enforcement of the law so that quality food products could be made available to the people.

The labelling of all processed food items mentioning the nutritional value and all the ingredients including the harmful trans-fatty acid would also be made mandatory from August 2007, the Minister informed.

Urging the food industry to maintain constrain while advertising for food items, he said that the government would scientifically analyse all the exaggerated claims being made by the various food itmes like it had done in case of cosmetics a few years back. He stressed the need to think about scienfic validation of all the claims being made for various food items.

Emphasising the need for regulating street food in the country, Dr Ramadoss said that being cheaper and easily available, street food could provide a huge employment opportunity to lower strata of society without being a health hazard for the people. He said that a pilot project is being run in Kolkata in this regard and gave example of Thailand and Malaysia where the quality of street food were being strictly regulated.

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