FSSAI conducts regular drives for the purpose of Surveillance, Enforcement, Awareness and Licensing. Since its conception, FSSAI has been working towards instilling the concept of safe and nutritious food in every citizen, and special drives serve this purpose.
The following drives have been carried out at West Region over the past one year –
Surveillance Drives
Surveillance Drives are carried out periodically to check compliance of products in market with the FSS Act, or rules and regulations made thereunder. The special drives carried out so far have focused on ensuring that the products are not in violation of the prescribed standards and thereby ensuring that sub-standard and unsafe food products are not entering the food chain.
1) Ice cream
Ice Cream is a dairy based dessert. It is being routinely served in various forms and types through retails outlets, restaurants, itinerant vendor etc. Ice cream is prone to microbial growth due to cold chain and process hygiene lapses. Therefore, it was evident to carry out microbiological safety assessment of ice-creams through microbial sampling and testing. Accordingly, a special surveillance drive was undertaken.
2) Toned milk, Cheese and Dairy Analogues
Milk products and analogues such as Toned Milk and Cheese analogues are susceptible to adulteration. Further, Cheese is a product composed of water and milk fat within a coagulated milk protein structure whereas cheese analogues are products wherein the milk fat is partly or completely replaced with other edible fats. Therefore, targeted market surveillance was carried out to ensure cheese analogues/imitation cheese is not misbranded as cheese. Further, toned milk was tested to assess Protein:Lactose ratio in SNF content.
3) Ghee
Addition of vegetable oil in Ghee is an infamous form of adulteration. Hence, a survey was initiated to test ghee for ß-sitosterol content, acting as the marker compound for indicating addition of vegetable oil in ghee. Further, products are misbranded as ghee, wherein mixtures of vegetable oils with added flavor purporting to be ghee are sold. The drive also focused on identifying such sub-standard products.
4) Trans fat
With a goal to achieve trans-fat free India by 2022, FSSAI mandated limiting the content of industrially produced trans-fat to 2% by mass of the total oils/fats in the product from January 2022. The drive was carried out to assess the trans-fat content in vegetable oils to ensure compliance to the FSSAI regulations.
5) Indian sweets and savories
During festive seasons, several products such as sweets and savories, especially milk based products like khoya are often adulterated, leading to rampant food poisoning. Special drives have been carried out during festive season with an intention to curb such incidences.
6) Fresh fruits and vegetables
Safe and hygienic practices followed at the APMC market for fresh fruits and vegetables were evaluated. The quality of water used to clean these fruits and vegetables was also tested.
7) Coffee
It was reported that the coffee based products available in the market are either depicting Coffee-Chicory mixtures as Pure Coffee or were not declaring percentage content of coffee and chicory separately in the mixtures. Therefore, a surveillance drive was run with the intent to achieve improvement.
8) Total Polar Compounds
During frying, Total Polar Compounds (TPCs) are formed through the process of hydrolysis, oxidation and polymerization of heated oils. Reuse of cooking oil for frying purpose results in the accumulation of TPCs, which have deleterious effect on the consumer’s health. TPCs serve as a quality index to assess the safety of edible and used cooking oil. FSSAI has set limits of 15% TPCs in edible oil and not more than 25% in used oil/fat. The Authority has launched Repurpose of Used Cooking Oil (RUCO) initiative to create a platform where manufacturers/FBOs can connect with aggregators to safely dispose off the used cooking oils. These aggregators further pass on the used oils to biodiesel manufacturers and/or soap manufacturers.
The drive was aimed at tracing the path of used cooking oil from several food outlets and ensuring that the oil/fat having high TPCs are not circulated back into the food chain.
9) Turmeric
The standards for turmeric laid down in the FSS Regulations prescribe the content of coloring power expressed as curcuminoid content on dry basis as not less than 2.0 percent by weight. The turmeric in its raw, loose and packaged form, from farm to fork,was tested for its compliance with the standards.
Enforcement Drives
1) Food Service Establishments
FSSAI has made menu labeling at food service establishments mandatory so as to ensure the consumer is informed about the calorific value, serving size, allergen information, veg and non-veg logo and nutrient content. This enables consumer to take informed choices and adopt mindful eating practices. A special drive was organized for enforcement to these rules and regulations.
2) Water and Water based Beverages
Water and Water based Beverages were surveyed and the products were found to be non-compliant on the basis of (i) non-compliant in respect to quality parameters of packaged drinking water, (ii) misbranded as non-carbonated water-based beverages by the intentional addition of other substances, thereby getting exempted from the scope of BIS license (iii) containing non-specified ingredients. Based on the results of this survey, an enforcement drive was taken up for further action.
