Spice with a pinch of caution: Laxity in domestic food regulation

Loopholes and opacities in India’s food regulation raise questions on the safety of food and put consumers at risk

New Delhi: A routine inspection of samples picked up from three retail outlets of Kowloon’s Tsim Sha Tsui locality by Hong Kong’s Centre for Food Safety last month has once again turned the spotlight on India’s food regulatory system.

The checks revealed the presence of ethylene oxide (ETO) — a carcinogen — in four popular products: the Madras Curry Powder, Sambar Masala, Curry Powder and Fish Curry Masala. The first three are manufactured by MDH and the fourth by Everest, two reputed spice brands.

Within days, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) ordered a recall of the 'Everest Fish Curry Masala'.

Other countries, like the USA and Australia, have begun gathering information on such contamination of flavouring agents manufactured in India, the world’s largest producer of spices.

India has mandated ETO checks in all consignments of spices and ready-to-eat products exported to Hong Kong and Singapore. The Spices Board India now makes it compulsory for consignments travelling to these two destinations to carry ETO-free certificates. The export of items to other nations will also be monitored strictly.

Multiple rounds of talks have been held with the industry to devise solutions to avoid such issues, with the latest round being held in Munnar last week. Comprehensive guidelines on preventing ETO contamination have also been released to sensitise businesses.

The spice story, however, is not a one-off occurrence.

A few years back, France restricted the sale of an Indian chilli powder brand because of the presence of a carcinogenic colouring agent named Sudan Red.

The European Union also found ETO residues in organic amaranth, flax seed, psyllium husk, caraway, quinoa, and fenugreek exported by India. As many as 527 ETO contamination cases were flagged by the EU since late 2020.

Others too have sounded alarm bells.

More than 40,000 food and medicinal items have been rejected by the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) in the last 24 years. However, the American federal agency does not disclose reasons as a part of its policy.

Earlier the FDA limited checks to testing for salmonella, mislabelling or misbranding and obvious contaminations detected by putrid smell. Over the years, the presence of pesticide residues in products manufactured in India has also figured as a major reason behind rejection.

There have been multiple warnings for the Indian regulatory authorities to take note and course correct. However, not much action is visible on the ground and it is unknown what measures have been put into place as authorities have shunned transparency.

“India has a strong law on food safety, but the implementation and enforcement is poor,” says Ashim Sanyal, chief operating officer and secretary of Consumer Voice, a non-governmental organisation working on consumers’ rights.

Domestically, the 2015 Maggi controversy was possibly one of the biggest crises in the food sector.

The popular food was taken off the shelf for a few months following the discovery of lead and MSG (monosodium glutamate) in the instant noodles.

In recent weeks, a well-known baby food and a cereal-based drink were found to contain unnecessarily high levels of sugar, overlooking health concerns.

The Federation of Indian Export Organisations has pitched for more stringent standards to avoid the recall of more Indian products from the shelves of foreign markets.

“If the domestic industry is adhering to the standards, exports become easy to them. They do not have to do anything extra to go into the export market,” says Federation of Indian Export Organisations director general Ajay Sahai.

“Look into those spices which those countries are objecting to. They are concerned about their consumers, but what about the Indian consumers? We are also consuming them,” he says, adding that such issues can be avoided only by imposing stricter standards on the domestic industry. “If we are moving towards the coveted status of a developed economy we will have to take care of all these things.”

Quality checks

There are two different mechanisms to check the quality of food sold in India and exported to other countries. For the domestic market, the duty to ensure that food is safe and healthy for consumption by the masses is bestowed upon the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, along with state food commissioners.

“For the export market, the Export Inspection Council (EIC) is responsible for determining if the product meets the quality standards of the exporting country,” says a Council of Scientific and Industrial Research scientist, New Delhi.

“The EIC has a string of dedicated laboratories including well-equipped units at Kochi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Delhi to carry out the analysis. The Spices Board, which governs India’s Rs 32,000 crore spice trade, also owns laboratories as the European Union insists on quality certificates from the Spices Board and not the EIC,” notes Lalitha Gowda, former chief scientist at the  Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysuru.

Since ETO counteracts bacteria, viruses, and fungi, it is often used in cold sterilisation to reduce the microbial contamination of heat-sensitive food products like spices, herbs and sesame seeds. The chemical is not registered as a pesticide in India but is used as a fumigant. 

More than a month since the controversy broke, there has been no response from the EIC and Spice Board – both under the Union Commerce Ministry – on why they failed to spot the residue of the forbidden chemical in the exported products.

While loopholes in the screening process are being examined, the controversy has sullied India’s image in the international spice market. But what is even more worrisome is the effort to create a narrative that all is well in the domestic market, even though experts note multiple flaws within the existing food regulatory system.

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) says nearly a quarter of the samples, tested between 2020-21 and 2022-23, failed to meet the standards. The number of samples being tested by FSSAI has increased by over three times this year to 4.5 lakh samples, but the results are yet to be released. Since 2018, multiple surveillance studies have been conducted on milk, milk products, oils, tea, pulses, trans-fat, rice and spice, but results are not available in the public domain.

It is possible that the spice survey was to check for the presence of banned colours but for transparency, the regulator should make these results available to the public. 

DH sent a detailed query to the FSSAI, seeking answers to some of the questions on the existing food regulatory system, besides requesting the regulatory body for the results of the 2022 survey on spices (in which 3,554 samples were analysed). No response was received from the authority as of the time the article went to print. 

The food regulator has developed over 700 standards for food products and has also reviewed and amended existing standards. It has expanded the standards for food additives, covering 350 items and food processing aids, by harmonising the national cut-offs with the globally used CODEX parameters.

States responsible 

But when it comes to implementation, the ball is in the states’ courts. About 90 per cent of the food business operators fall under their jurisdiction. “Enforcement of the provisions of the act to a large extent rest with the state governments,” the FSSAI says in a statement.

“The Food Safety Officers in many states are either corrupt or do not do their job of regularly sampling a few thousand food items every month,” points out a senior scientist, who has served on the FSSAI technical panels for several years.

Going by the book, four sets of samples are to be taken. The first one is tested at state-level laboratories. If the operator is not satisfied with the outcome, he/she can challenge the state when the second set is to be tested at any of the FSSAI-notified laboratories. If the dispute persists, the third set is examined at any of the 18 referral laboratories, whose decision will be final. The fourth set is a backup option.

Human resources 

While such a system exists, it is not clear whether the states follow it diligently as many suffer from a shortage of human resources as well as funds. The Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee reveals an acute shortage of food safety officers in various states, in a 2022 report.

For instance, Bihar needs 115 food safety officers but has only 14. Rajasthan needs 98 and has none, while Odisha needs 105, but has only 27. Just about 50% of the FSO positions are occupied across India. Many states do not have a full-time food commissioner. 

In addition, there is also a shortage of testing laboratories at the state level, raising doubts about whether an adequate number of samples are tested.

In each of the four years since 2017-18, West Bengal tested less than 2,000 samples. The number did not even cross the 1,000  mark in three of the four years in Odisha. In Andhra Pradesh, less than 5,000 products were tested annually. Karnataka too tested less than 5,000 samples between 2017 and 2020 and only examined over 5,200 samples in 2020-21, according to the Union Health Ministry.

Even a 2017 study by Kerala Agriculture University, which monitors pesticide levels in spices produced in the Malabar state, noted that a majority of the 75 samples of spices and other products tested had pesticide presence. Some curry powder makers justify the high levels of pesticides detected as the heavy use of pesticides during cultivation.

Thomas Biju Mathew, former professor and head of the pesticide residue laboratory at the Kerala Agriculture University, says a reduction in the use of pesticides is unlikely as they are essential for good yields. 

Last year, the FSSAI revamped its scientific committee and 21 scientific panels. “Earlier the panels had 11 members. Now, this has been brought down to nine. The new panels lack diversity in terms of expertise,” notes a senior scientist, who worked for the food regulator.

“It is high time for the food industry to start investing in scientific testing rather than firefighting when a crisis comes. The problems should be resolved without any bias,” he adds. 

(With contributions from Chiranjeevi K, Gyanendra Kesari and Arjun Raghunath)