Industry does not want to be regulated; Just wants to make money: Dave

Sanjay Dave, chairman, Codex Alimentarius Commission, and advisor, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), said that self-regulation was the need of the hour for the food industry, and warned that it wouldn’t be able to do so because it didn’t want to be regulated, but was keener to make money.
He was speaking at the sixth National Food Research and Development (R&D) seminar, organised in Mumbai on Wednesday by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), in association with FSSAI and the ministry of food processing industries (MoFPI).
One of the topics discussed at the meet, which was attended by representatives of the industry, the government, the regulators and consumer bodies, was food safety and the need for the industry, the government and the regulators to work in tandem for the benefit of the consumers, who were, after all, at the receiving end.
“The new challenges that are cropping up are unknown to the industry. So, they remain unaddressed, and this, in turn, leads to issues that concern the health of the consumers,” Dave stated, urging not only FSSAI, but also other sectors of the food business, including exporters, to work closely with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).    
He added, “Implementing good agriculture practices is also very important. There are also continuous deliberations by the Codex Alimentarius Commission on the likely effects of climate change in India. Codex always thinks about these issues and takes them into consideration.”
“We need to know of consumer choices. The ministries of food processing industries; agriculture; food, consumer affairs and public distribution system, commerce and health, and FSSAI have to work in synergy to encourage scientists to come up with many more innovations and also regulations,” Dave stated.
“Harmonisation is going to complete in the middle of October, and it would be going to the scientific committee for approval. We are following science and implementing science-based standards for the safety of food,” he added.
“A number of other issues related to the food safety were discussed by the experts, representative of the government, FSSAI representatives and consumer forum representatives,” Dave said.
There were discussion on various topics such as safe food and Better Business: Two Sides of a Coin.
The panellists included Dr J J Lewis, member of scientific panel for labelling and claims/advertisements (who spoke about ‘Dimension of Food Safety: Evolving with Science’); Sanjay Sharma, chief executive officer, MTR Foods (who spoke on ‘Diversity in Business: Traversing Food Safety’), and Prakash Sanghavi of the Food Ingredient Manufacturers and Suppliers Association of India (who spoke about ‘Converging Choice and Safety through Horizontal Standards’). The topic was chaired by Anuradha Prasad, joint secretary, MoFPI.
The topic on ‘Food Safety Net: Where does India stand’ was chaired by Dave. The panellists included Dr Roger Bektash, director, scientific affairs, Australia and Asia, Mars (who spoke about ‘Building Blocks of Response Mechanism to Global Interactions); Dr Sitaram Dixit, chairman, Consumer Guidance Society of India (who spoke about the lessons learned from food safety outbreaks), and Dr Sangeeta Sharma, senior surgeon, poultry research and farm, Government of Madhya Pradesh (who spoke about the National Food Safety Grid).
The last topic of the event was Food Safety: Linking Consumer, Processes and Markets. It was chaired by Dr Bektash, and the panellists included Tejas Bhatt, director, Global Traceability Centre, Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), United States (who spoke about the Challenge to Track my Food: Global Supply Chain); Ramakrishnan Narasimhan, registrar’s director, UL, USA (who spoke about ‘Mending Single Road for Different Countries: Certification Standards), and Bejon Misra from Consumer Voice (who spoke about ‘Challenges in Managing Food Recall: An Indian Scenario’).