Traceability Crucial For A Safe Food Chain : Prof. K V Thomas

Prof K V Thomas, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, today,lauded CII’s continuing national training initiatives in promoting awareness on Food Safety and Quality in conjunction with the various stakeholders. He was delivering the inaugural address at the 6th National Food Safety and Quality Summit with the theme “Partnering for Food Safety: An Agenda for Safe Food Supply Chain”, organisied by Confederation of Indian Industry, (CII) , . With the enactment of the Food Safety and Standards Act 2006 (FSSA) effective the 5th August 2011, India had taken a significant step forward to ensure Food Safety for consumers in India as well as abroad. “Adoption of modern methods of traceability detection like Bar codes and effective labeling would ensure that the entire food chain becomes safer for the consumers”, he said. Industry too would need to comply under the integrated FSSA, instead of the multitude of food related acts and CII needed to play a leading role in its effective implementation he said. He also emphasized that Food Safety was an inseparable part of the nations Food Security. He suggested some pointers for deliberation which included evolving a strategic plan to strengthen food safety, scaling up the awareness initiatives in food safety, a National Emergency Prevention System and a Rapid Response system keeping the changing geographical reach of food production and the ensuing Climate changes. Delivering the Keynote Address, Dr Gopi Ghosh, Assistant Country Representative, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) while identifying the challenges being faced by the food industry, detailed FAO’s new approach in tackling them. These included varied interventions in standards building, topics of training in GMP/HACCP and awareness creation. He also spoke of the knowledge depository database in the FAO website from which one could obtain some of the best in class practices. Mr Manu Anand, Chairman, CII National Committee on FMCG & Chairman & CEO-PepsiCo India Region, Pepsico India Holdings Pvt Ltd delivering the welcome remarks noted that Summit focus was to rally all the partner stakeholders to drive food safety and quality across the entire Food Chain where each had their own responsibility towards ensuring safe food to the end consumer. A Safe Food Supply chain is ensured when it manages its partnership process well, systematically upgrading the levels of relationship with aligned policies and strategies including effective Communication, Co-Decision making and Co- creating through shared competency development programs, resource upgradation and periodic review of the benefits. Mr Raj Jain, President Walmart India and Managing Director and CEO, Bharti Walmart in his Special Address on “Implementing Food Safety from Farm to Fork” said, “Food Safety is an important issue in India and one that requires our immediate and utmost attention. Lack of hygienic, good manufacturing and agricultural practices, particularly in fresh, impact not just the quality of food, but also deny safe and healthy products to the consumer. Bharti Walmart works with more than 2000 farmers in India to increase farm yield and farmer income, in addition to help grow safe, non-toxic farm produce by introducing international best practices. Building food safety standards in India requires massive capital investment. Allowing FDI in multi-brand retail will greatly enhance food safety efforts and bring about a paradigm shift in this area, thereby helping people live better.” Enumerating the various challenges facing the Food Chain in the country, he opined that Efficiency, Inclusiveness and Sustainability would be crucial factors in the Food Supply Chain. Mr Piruz Khambatta, Chairman, CII National Task Force on Food Safety & Quality in his Concluding Remarks while observing that Indian food laws were one of the best in Asia noted the shift from agriculture to value based agriculture and the need to improve India’s Agri-GDP. “Food processing can do to rural India, what IT has done for urban India and would be the best form of CSR in creating livelihoods for people” he said. In this context he mentioned the various projects and initiatives that CII had undertaken to achieve this goal. The 6th National Food Safety and Quality Summit will bring together all the stakeholders in the Food Supply Chain to deliberate on the various challenges being faced by the Food industry. CII (Food Safety & Quality), since its inception, has been a preferred partner for information and knowledge dissemination, training, consultancy, skill and capacity building services and for providing a platform to share information and best practices. In view of the growing importance and interest in Food Safety & Quality globally and to scale up the level of activities in the domain, the FSQ activities are guided by an Expert Group on Food Safety and Quality consisting of technical experts from the Indian Industry.