Show me a composite chocolate or else...!
Sorry, I am beginning to sound like an old gramophone record that's got stuck, but the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has succeeded in casting its ominous shadow on the impending Diwali celebrations. And the government's announcement - that it has begun a search for a new chairman of this body functioning under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare - can do little to change the situation on the ground.
To give you just a foretaste of the rest of this column, let me share with you the experience of Hoegarden, the popular Belgian wheat beer. Eight shipments of this internationally well-regarded beer, which is gaining a fan following across India, were diverted to Dubai some time back because the FSSAI refused to let them through on the ground that water had not been listed as an ingredient on the label that had been especially created by the manufacturer for the result, is off the menu of restaurants around the country. The problem is not entirely the FSSAI (one of whose senior officers, incidentally, is a veterinary doctor!), but the 711-page law and the regulations emanating from it.
From a piece of legislation that was meant to make life easier by replacing eight laws with one, it has opened a Pandora's box of contentious interpretations of the law, which has led to Tata Starbucks and the reputed chocolate maker, Barry Callebaut, taking the authority to court. Worse, it is a law that is interpreted differently in each of the seven ports of the country that receive the bulk of food imports. Insiders in the know of the situation on the ground say that the FSSAI doesn't have the network of laboratories required to carry out its mandate, which explains why it has been generously extending the registration deadline for restaurants. It can do little else because it is an authority with a complicated law to implement, without forces on the ground -- in Gurgaon, for instance, it has one inspector for 10,000 "food business operators".
What it has been doing, as a result, is insist that the label carried by each imported food item adheres to the archaic norms of the FSSAI. It's in a hopeless situation of implementing a law that deserves to be junked. The Food Safety and Standards Act of 2006 has created the most tragi-comic situations. India is the world's second largest export of buffalo meat, but the government doesn't anymore allow the import of beef (so, the "tenderloin" or the Angus or the Wagyu on your favourite five-star hotel's menu may have come from Aligarh). The law however allows corned beef imports! It red flags mayonnaise, which explains the disappearance of international brands, nor is it happy with chocolates, but it has no issues with "composite chocolates"! Lindt, after trying very hard to convince the authority that it has been selling chocolates for decades and had never heard of anything called composite chocolates, just gave up and withdrew from the Indian market, of course after incurring a hefty loss.
At a seminar organised by the European Union in Mumbai on the eve of the Annapoorna World of Food Fair, the representative of an FSSAI-approved private laboratory network related the instance of a consignment of a reputed brand of baby biscuits, which sells in 60 countries, being returned because it listed "sea salt", and not "salt", among its ingredients. Isn't it ironic that in the land of Mahatma Gandhi, who produced sea salt in defiance of the British Raj, the item is considered unsafe for human consumption? I could have multiplied such examples, which would have led to much hilarity had these been unreal, but these isn't a joke. All that the law has done is show up India as some backward, tin pot republic - and create a massive business opportunity for the grey market. It'll get you the chocolate you desire, but it won't be "composite" chocolate.