Is The Order Ready?
A
year after the roadmap to modern, integrated food law was drawn up in
the Union Budget, we still remain way off the goal. Amitava Sanyal
looks at the chequered path of the legislation that promises to pick
the country's food industry from the pickle it's in
The
Indian food industry agrees with Charles Dickens’ Mr Bumble – the law
is an ass. Sample this: Not only are we laden with a variety of antiquated
laws but many of them don’t often agree with others. It often takes
up to two years to walk a new product through the central food standard
authorities, and there’s no appellate authority to contest the final
ruling. We have also signed a multilateral agreement at the World Trade
Organisation that requires harmonisation of the food laws by October
2004 – and that’s still a dream. The list goes on.
“About
3,000 cases are pending for several foreign food companies. They are
suffering because of these laws,” says NM Kejriwal, Vice President and
Treasurer, International Life Sciences Institute, India.
The
confusion also came under the public gaze with the bottled water saga,
when the Union ministries of Consumer Affairs, Health and Food Processing
had to get into the unenviable act of clearing the air when an NGO stirred
a hornet’s nest by claiming that it had found pesticide residue in some
samples that it tested.
“In
addition to various provisions, there are amendments and additions or
deletions every now and then, which appear in the Government Gazette.
When one wants to have a look at the standards, there is no one authentic
publication of the Government. The US and UK food legislations are published
by government agencies and are available for sale at one point,” points
out Dr Jagdish Pai, Head of Department, Food & Fermentation Technology
Division, Chemical Technology Department, University
of Mumbai.
There’s
more, points out Dr Pai. “As per the WTO provisions, the food standards
applicable to products crossing international boundaries will be the
Codex (Codex Alimentarius, authored by the Food and Agriculture Organization
and World Health Organization), and not the local food laws. This will
mean that an imported product can contain something that is permitted
by the Codex, but not on the permitted additives’ list under the Prevention
of Food Adulteration (PFA) Act.”
The
new recipe
In
the previous Budget, it all seemed to be happening. The industry heaved
a sigh of relief when the then Finance Minister, Yashwant Sinha, declared
that a modern integrated food law would be instituted in place of the
existing multiplicity of regulations for food standards. A Group of
Ministers (GoM) was formed under the express orders of the Prime Minister
to take forward the process of drafting the new law. The bogey juddered
at the very onset as the chairmanship of the GoM was passed around among
several ministries – from commerce to finance, and finally, law.
Cut
to the chase. A year has passed by and the GoM has met only once – that
too as late as January 27. And thanks to the latest reshuffle in the
Union council of ministers, we have new faces in the GoM, including
a new Law Minister. The draft legislation that is being debated needs
the assent of the GoM on several issues to hasten the Cabinet, and thence,
the Parliament. Before the reshuffle, a tentative date had been fixed
in early February for the next GoM meet, but that date is history and
we don’t have another yet.
But
not all is lost. The integrated food law, interestingly, found mention
in the Presidential address to the joint session of Parliament at the
beginning of the Budget Session on February 17,2003. If nothing else,
it indicates the seriousness that the Union Government is investing
in the new law. A senior government official even said that if he could
help it, he would have the Bill tabled before the current (Budget) Session
of Parliament was through.
It
has to be admitted that despite the political ennui, some ground has
been covered. The relevant industry associations – Confederation of
Indian Industry, Confederation of Indian Food Trade and Industry (CIFTI),
All India Food Preservers’ Association and the likes – have submitted
a concept paper on integrated law. The Government has introduced what
one official calls “a good balance between industry interests and consumer
needs”. A few issues that the GoM wanted ironed out by the respective
Secretariats – of the Law, Commerce, Agriculture, Health and Family
Welfare, Consumer Affairs and Food Processing Ministries – have been
dealt with.
| We
have borrowed one of the most important clauses from the US Bio-terrorism
Law – the application of capital punishment for those indulging
in a “deliberate attempt to cause death”. This would be a remarkable
first for the food laws in the country |
|
|
But
the (PFA) Department in the Health Ministry queered the pitch late last
year by proposing amendments to the PFA Act, a longstanding demand of
the industry. The Food Processing Ministry, the Secretariat for the
new Law, steadied the ship by positing that since we were headed for
an integrated law, amendments to old ones would be totally redundant.
That’s
because the integrated law seeks convergence among the existing regulations
for food standards – the PFA Act, 1954, PFA Rules, 1955, the ssential
Commodities Act, mandatory certification including Food Products Order,
the Milk & Milk Products Order and the likes. Amendments would also
be made to rules governing Agmark and Bureau of Industrial Standards
to remove mandatory certification in relation to Food Articles from
these.
The
law also has to contain the necessary legal provisions regarding labelling.
Hence, the Standards of Weights & Measures Act, 1976, the related
Packaged Commodities Rules, 1977, the Standards of Weights & Measures
(Enforcement) Act, 1985 and Infant Milk Substitutes and Feeding Bottles
Act shall have to exclude all products covered under the new law.
A
key point in the new scheme of things would be the setting up of an
autonomous Food Regulatory Authority of India (see box ‘The new food
administration’). The Authority would coordinate and supervise the implementation
of the new law and formulate rules and procedures for the future. A
Council for Food Standards, which would have a much larger representation
of all stakeholders, would be in charge of recommending the key mandatory
minimum food safety standards and regulations to the FRAI.
With
the ball in the Government’s court at the moment, the industry is concerned
about the punitive elements that would be introduced – it wants a “grading
of violations” to avoid harassment in the field. Partha S Mukherjee,
Vice President of CIFTI and Director (Legal & Corporate Affairs)
at Glaxo SmithKline Beecham Consumer Healthcare, says that “It is the
punishment angle that concerns us. We should also look closely at the
case for vertical standards (essential compositional standards for selected
foods) against horizontal ones. We are for having an appellate authority
outside the courts.”
The
Government, on its part, assures adequate safeguards too. The new law
wouldn’t allow anyone to be prosecuted unless an appeal panel has gone
into the case at the state level. Inspectors too can be reprimanded
for indulging in deliberate harassment.
The
body that would put the new law into practice would be the proposed
Food Safety Administration. It would monitor all matters relating to
food safety and enforcement of it. Most importantly, it is this body
that would ensure compliance in each state.
Well
that takes care of the promised ‘integration’ of the laws. What about
the ‘modernisation’ underwritten alongside? Food safety is a growing
concern the world over, and to facilitate trade, the Indian authorities
have to conform to global standards. For one, the new law has gleaned
from the Food Standards Code in Australia and New Zealand, a region
with which India’s food trade amounted to almost $250 million in 2001-02.
The result: “unsafe and unsuitable food” has replaced “adulterated”,
an archaic term in the modern food phraseology. Even for the concept
paper, industry members looked at the codes published in the European
Union and Malaysia, among others.
Interestingly,
another piece of legislation that our mandarins have drawn from is the
Bio-terrorism Law (Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness
and Response Act), introduced in US in 2002. From this has come one
of the most interesting clauses – the application of capital punishment
for those indulging in a “deliberate attempt to cause death”. This would
be a remarkable first for the food laws in the country. The European
Union is still weighing such a step.
To
the table?
So
far, so good. But whither hence? Where is the industry headed in the
absence of a definite timeline to the whole process? None of the officials
TFPJ spoke to had that answer.
“If
nothing is announced in this Budget, we will go to the Prime Minister.
Nothing is likely to happen without his intervention,” says Mr Kejriwal,
a senior member at the All India Food Preservers’ Association.
The
top brass at the Food Processing Ministry remains tight-lipped about
the timeline, saying that much is in the hands of the new Law Minister,
Arun Jaitley.
Over
to Mr Jaitley.
