'Uniform food law to be in place by May'

DELHI: At long last, over four years after it was mooted, the Centre is getting things moving on a single, omnibus food law. The law is meant to regulate and promote orderly growth in the food processing industry, which is governed by multiple legislation. It will be in place by by mid or end-May, said Subodh Kant Sahay, minister for food processing industries.

The group of ministers (GoM) — headed by food and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar — which met in Delhi on Monday, cleared the draft bill “unanimously,� for forwarding to the Cabinet. The legislation covers enforcement of quality standards and lays down ground rules for keeping the food processing sector informed on the policy changes and responses on strategic issues such as GM foods and irradiation.

It has also suggested a single reference point for standards, regulations and enforcement agencies and seeks to remove constraints on the packaging front, the cost of which ranges from 10-64% of production costs.

Mr Sahay told ET that as the piloting ministry, the food processing ministry was preparing a note to be vetted by the law ministry and sent to the Cabinet. It will then be circulated to all relevant ministries. Some 15 ministries and departments are directly or indirectly involved including health, commerce, law, food, agriculture, food processing, water resources, industry, panchayati raj and department of women & child development.

Key recommendations of the integrated legislation on food were expected to be clinched by the GoM on food in end-November last year, after which they were to be forwarded to the states for their comments before the draft was finalised. An earlier GoM decided to put off clinching key decisions.

The move towards clearing the law comes after Rabo India was asked to come up with a study-cum-vision document on the sector. Rabo’s study was aimed at projecting both growth and direction plans for the next decade.
The NCMP of the UPA government identified food processing as a key sector to boost exports, domestic trade and employment generation. It plans to double the rate of growth in this sector over the next five years. The integrated food law was conceived as a radical omnibus legislation that would provide a single window to guide units in marketing, processing, handling, transportation and sale of food.

Food standards are currently regulated under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, Fruit Products Order, Meat Products Order, BIS, and Milk and Milk Products Control Order.

Thus far, the food processing sector has been wracked by myriad rules, regulations and standards, overlapping and contradictory - almost 13 separate regulations - administered by authorities at the Central and State levels. Despite sporting arable land of 184m hectares and producing 91m tonnes of milk annually (highest in the world), 150m of fruits & vegetables (second largest), 483m livestock (largest), 210m tonnes foodgrain (third largest) and 6.2m tonnes fish (7th largest), the food processing levels in India are very low and the percentage of wastage is very high. This has directly impacted farm incomes.

Conservative estimates put processing levels in the fruits & vegetables sector at 2%, meat & poultry at 2%, milk by way of modern dairies at 14%, fish at 4%. Bulk meat de-boning is to the tune of 21%. Processing in the areas of foodgrains, oilseed, tea, coffee, etc. where raw products have perforce to be processed have had a tradition of being processed is high. Even in these products the demands of modern food processing sector are still emerging.

Compared to the developed countries of the world we are far behind, unfortunately we lag behind even compared to countries like Philippines and China where value addition is 45% and 23% respectively as compared to our rate of 7% in food products.