Open Letter to Prime Minister for Ensuring Safe Food Supplies

Open Letter to Hon'ble Prime Minister for providing Safe, Wholesome and Affordable Food

To,

Hon’ble Prime Minister of India

7 RCR, New Delhi

Respected Sir,

Like every year, we will have budget announcement. No government talks of food safety and how to control adulteration. It seems either these issues are not important or too complicated fro government to address. Let us see what is the priority of your government.


We only hear that India should become superpower, industrial power, sporting power, knowledge power, skilled power but without safe and hygienic food, where future of India (kids) dies in school by eating contaminated food in midday meals supplied in school under the gudiance of adminstartion and defective policy makers and no heads are rolled for proving unsafe food.
Our ministries are making all out efforts to address problems of junk food manufactures and even willing to dilute and compromise the food laws to accommodate junk foods, but not willing to spend time in making food safety norms and laws to ensure safe food for future of India i.e. school kids under mid-day meal programs. You may saying I am wrong, file an RTI and find out how many meetings happened in India to make mid-day meal safe and what are the food safety norms including for water, utensils and kitchen. 
Before budget session, I thought, let me share some practical issues for the cause of nation building through food processing sector. Some of these practical suggestions may be of some help in reaching the desired destination in nation building as envisaged our Hon'ble President and Prime Minister.

Food processing Industry should be promoted as a price stabilization industry for consumers, not just for manufacturing of value added products. Extended shelf life of perishable products will help in stabilizing prices of fresh produce  in off season.Example: Tomato Paste can be good substitute for fresh tomatoes.

Agro-food Processing can also help in value generation in agriculture by-products as well which is generally considered as waste or products with no commercial value.This will create additional income in rural India and will create employment generation.

Ministry of Food Processing Industries is a development agency and should focus on the development of following:

a. Take all necessary actions in collaboration with all relevant Ministries to make Indian industry globally competitive by reducing transaction costs. Review all outdated laws which are adding cost but no value for anyone, except corrupt officials and inspectors. 

b. Food Processing is a knowledge intensive industry, more than IT sector. Every crop, every farm and every batch of food is new challenge from food safety point of view. Focus on Technical and Managerial Skills of people those who can understand and can run food business. This is a specialized business activity, needs proper skills, no just general management or knowledge. Poor technical knowledge will lead to poor quality and unsafe products.

c. Create proper and appropriate Infrastructure for handling and preservation of food items, not just warehouses.

d. Focus on Market Development for sensible and nutritious products for healthy lifestyle. Prevent Junk foods spread to public health because "We are are what we eat".

Promote innovation in manufacturing of safe and sensible products for the consumers.

The Major Action Points to achieve the above stated objectives are given below. These are in line with the political manifesto of Prime Minister of India.

S. No.	Doable Action Points
To minimize Corruption and Improve accountability
1	All license holder Processors should be exempted from any formalities required under APMC Act. If they are directly dealing with farmers, they will have better supplies. In place of spending in government offices, they will spend time in fields. This will help in up-gradation in quality and development of grassroot level infrastructure. This will also give level playing field between people those who violate tax laws and those who honestly pay mandi taxes. This will minimize corruption at mandi level as well and honest industry will not suffer due to cost difference created by “Mandi Tax Chori" by people with criminal mindset. This will impact "Make in India" mission as well.
2	Work to improve the image of processed food industry in the country. Unless we do it, growth of industry will suffer. Today, trust level is very low on processed foods among people. Manufacturers should told that adulteration will be treated at par with terrorist activity, because in both the cases objective to harm the society for personal gains and vested interests.  Make sure that processed foods sold in the market must meet food safety norms. This should be non-negotiable condition. Any substandard food supply should be treated as criminal offense under Criminal Law. For small scale industry government should provide common infrastructure support in the form of warehousing of cold storage on user charges basis under PPP mode.
3	Food Inspectors should ensure that license holders in their area understand food laws and their factories are hygienically maintained. All food factories should be open for social audit about hygienic conditions only. Food Safety Auditing Companies should be made accountable like CAs under New Companies Act. Today, food safety certificates are sold by certification companies at cost for participation in tenders and for grant purposes without proper safety audits.   Photography of all food factories must be mandatory as part of inspection visit. This will expose hygiene conditions without impacting IPR laws. This will check corruption and ensure approval to only good factories. Approval certification against bribe should be stopped.
4	In place of Grants, Government should only provide soft loans at reduced interest so that money can be provided to more units every year. This will minimize corruption and encourage accountability. MFPI should also undertake CAG or third party audit of all the food parks funded so far and private units funded by tax payers money as grants to know the proper use of funds by these units. This will be an eye opener for you and all.
5	All food testing laboratories, including government supported private laboratories doing commercial testing for other units, must be linked to Internet for online access of results of the food samples.  This will minimize the chances of corruption, will fix accountability of food inspectors and laboratories. Citizens will know how many samples were collected and found adulterated and by which company.     If USA and EU can have rejection reports online, why it can't be done in India? What is the objective and motive of hiding the facts from consumers?
6	MFPI must publish consumer survey reports, based on online survey, about the quality of food and consumer perception about foods sold in India, every 6 months for all the food sectors of Industry. This will improve the ground reality in coming days. MFPI will be in position to direct its its time and resources in right direction.
For Skill and Technology Upgradation
7	Establish one ITI dedicated for Food Hygiene and Safety in every state for dedicated service to food processing and related sectors. This will improve skills of operators about hygiene, food safety and maintenance of food machines.
8	Industry associations should be given responsibility for capacity building of their association members. At least one promoter director must go through the training every year. Many promoters force their employees to by-pass the hygiene and food safety norms to maximize their profits. Unless they get retraining certificate from the associations, they are affiliated to, they should be asked to do so for applying for renewal of licenses. This will ensure timely up-gradation of units and they will be able to understand changes expected by them as manufacture, both by law and consumers. Government officials dealing with food business should also go through the training every year. This will improve mutual respect between Industry and Government departments.
9	Every Agriculture University must have a pilot plant and innovation center for food processing. Whatever crops they produce on campus must be processed and sold. This will help in new product development and also development of skilled manpower for industry.
10	Establish Research facilities with the help of international research institutes on traditional Indian foods which are better in nutritional value than most of the western junk foods. This will improve their presentation, convenience and shelf-life. This will also help in exports from India. This will improve the reach of Indian foods and “Brand India” on global stage. So far Indian research institutes have not delivered as per expectations. They should also be compared and face competition from other research institutes.
11	Make it mandatory to have minimum qualification of operators in food industry to ensure hygiene and safety of food. Even medicine shops have minimum qualification for shopkeepers, why food industry can't have this. Is acquiring basic qualification about food hygience and food safety bad or wrong?
Investments and Infrastructure for Food Handling
12	FDI should be encouraged in food processing sector except Junk Foods. Review import duties and export incentives on food items so that value addition and investments is encouraged within India. Today many policies and laws favour imported foods w.r.t. domestic manufactures foods. Example: Oils and Pulses. Try to minimize commodity exports, focus should be on export of Value Added products. Export incentives should be only for value added products with 100% value addition. This will force export houses to invest in technology and people.
13	On National Highways, after every 100 Kms there must be a food processing cluster and food storage hub. This will ensure low cost movement of food and will improve processing activities including by-product utilization.
14	Perishable products must be given special railways cargo coaches and space in long distance passenger railways trains for timely and low cost transportation.
15	Railways should create special wagons for Low Temperature and Frozen Foods transportation.
16	There must be minimum hygiene standard for food equipment design and fabrication in line with 3A standards for food machines. This will bring more investment and skills to food industry. BIS must establish food machines code at the earliest.
17	There must be standards for packaging materials for food products so that over use of packaging can be avoided and packaging waste can be minimized in consumption centers. This will reduce the cost of packaging and processed foods will become affordable.Over-packaging, over size packs compre to materiel packed, is becoming a norm in snack food industries, this is leading to pollution and valuable resources are over used. This needs serious attention.
18	All public sector departments should be told to source the processed food items from the state of their location and made by MSMEs provided, those units have ISO-22000 Food Safety Management System in place with due registration. This will help local employment generation and consumption of local products by local units. This will save transportation cost and help local industry development. Remote areas will have employment generation.
19	Bankers should treat food processing activity as priority sector because it is helping in preventing losses of perishable products which are already part of priority sector. When food inflation is high, people are suffering, producing food and then wasting due to improper handling is a crime. This must be considered as "National Waste".
20	In place of spending money on doing general and 'no-impact' seminars, MFPI must organize intensive capacity building programs for new investors and existing promoters. This will help in proper development of food industry and people with right mindset will enter the industry.

Sir, you may be having better ideas and suggestion for the preservation of perishables and use of agriculture biomass for job and wealth creation in rural India? 

If required undersigned can make the presentation to concerned Ministries with action plan on how to do it, on how these can be done in low cost in time bound manner.

Looking forward to see how much food wastage we will be able to save by 2019 and how many food poisoning cases will happen by 2019.

What will be the food inflation by 2019 elections will be an interesting study.

With best regards,

Sincerely Yours’

Vijay Sardana