If the Consumer Affairs Ministry had its say, imported food grains and pulses containing hazardous foreign matter would have made its way on to the Indian platter. In fact, import of damaged grains too would have been a possibility - on the pretext of the country witnessing inadequate food grains’ production.

The Ministry, besides a number of importers, had called for a relaxation in the existing set norms for the import of food grains including pulses, even if it had extraneous matter or impurities.

But citing health reasons, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) - the country’s food regulator, turned down the Ministry’s request.

Sources in the FSSAI confirmed to The Pioneer that besides the Consumer Ministry, various food grains and pulses importers had been representing to the Authority urging it to be “lenient” in implementing the standards in respect of foreign matter “including animal origin” found in the food items.

“They (importers and the Consumer Ministry) had argued that at times during the unloading of stocks, mud or such foreign material gets mixed with the food items making them impure. And hence it was not prudent to reject the entire stock on the basis of such samples picked up for the test,” the sources maintained.

They said stock rejection was causing financial loss to them and also showcased the country’s acute shortfall in food grains production.

The FSSAI, however, made it clear to them that in keeping with its mandate of ensuring safe imports into India, it cannot relax the prescribed limit as defined under the FSS (standards prescribed under Food Product Standards and Food Additives) Regulation 2011 in respect of foreign matter, mineral matter and damaged grains in food items such as wheat, maze, jwar, bajra and pulses.

FSSAI CEO VN Gaur confirmed that the matter was considered by the food authority. “We also made it clear to the Ministry as well as importers that relaxation of the set norms was not under its purview. Only Parliament has the mandate to do so.”

But we did consider operational issues, inconvenience suffered by the food importers in India  and the need for import of certain types of food grains due to inadequate domestic production,” Gaur added.

Importers have now been given an opportunity to improve the quality of the imported food grains by removing the foreign matters, mineral matter and damaged grains subject to the condition that cleaning and sorting of the food grains will be done by the importer strictly under the supervision of the customs in customs-bound area to make the consignment conforming to the standards, he explained.

Source: dailypioneer.com