Cheese and snack sample of a super market fail food test

LUCKNOW: The food samples collected from Lucknow's Khoya mandi and two major stores have failed the authority's test. Around 33% of food samples collected from the market during Diwali time have been reported to be violating Food Safety and Security Authority of India's norms. The team had taken around 34 samples, out of which 12 could not pass the laboratory test.

The official in charge of FSSAI JP Singh said that according to the report collected from food analysis laboratory of Varanasi, the cheese and snacks' samples collected from a prominent super market in Aashiyana colony have been found to be of inferior quality. Officials said that labeling norms were violated in the packed snacks of the store. Another big store for food purchase in the locality also came under FSSAI scanner during Diwali.

Packets of raw material of sweets being sold in the store also violated packaging norms. The khoya samples picked from Pandit Khoya Mandi, Thakurganj Khoya Mandi and Kursi Road Khoya Mandi have also been reported to be substandard during Diwali time. Similarly sweet samples collected from a Rahimnagar shop and cheese collected from a dairy shop in Khurram nagar near Picnic Spot Road were of inferior quality.

The ghee samples picked from Biharipur Saadatganj and sample of mustard cooking oil from various shops have been found to be ignoring the standards. The curd collected from a famous dairy shop in Chowk was of substandard quality. FSSAI officials said they would soon file case against shopkeepers selling inferior quality food material to consumers in the ADM court.

If their guilt is proved in the court, the shopkeepers in question would be charged a penalty of Rs 1-5 lakh, said FSSAI officials.

NASA to grow more veggies in space

The International Space Station

Astronauts will now turn into cosmic gardeners and grow lettuce in space as United States space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is all set to send the largest ever plant growth chamber to the International Space Station (ISS).

It will launch the Vegetable Production System aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule on Monday.

The plant growth chamber will grow lettuce inside prototype flight pillows that will help the plants withstand zero gravity, The Verge reported. Red, blue, and green light emitting diodes (LEDs) will help sustain the vegetables, and the plant chamber itself can grow to 11.5 inches wide and 14.5 inches deep, NASA said.

This will be “the largest plant growth chamber for space to date,” according to NASA payload scientist Gioia Massa.

The project was originally slated to launch late last year, but faced delays meant to ensure all safety precautions were taken, the report said.

It is now hoped that the chamber will eventually be used to grow a wider variety of vegetables, and even be used for recreational gardening, the report said.

The chamber may even be used for more ambitious projects, like providing food for the average person back on Earth. After extensive testing on weightless horticulture, NASA is confident the lack of gravity will not impede growth.

However, space-borne microbes that may develop during growth are a cause of concern. Therefore, the lettuce will undergo extensive testing before astronauts chow down.

is rice puller business legal in india,

i have seen,many people running behind rice pullers,they say its legal,and they say rice pullers have some iridium power,which is very costly and they say,some companies pay you 10,000 cr per inch,firstly of all,or all this things exit and they are legal or not.

    1. Well, i do not know much of such facts that rice millers ( and not pullers) use a powder of a white metal like iridium to give a coating of extra unnatural shine to polish the rice grains, but if they are doing so then such white metal i.e. iridium, then such use of radio active metal powder being hazardous to health can be deemed as an offence under The Food Safety & Standard Act, 2006. I think you should share such information with state Commissioner of Food safety appointed u/s 30 of such Act, 2006 or to Food Safety Officer appointed u/s 37 of such Act, 2006.

2. You can also make such information released to electronic media as well as press media personnel.

Indian drugs: hard to swallow

Patients have become wary of India-made drugs after a number of reports highlighted their substandard quality. But regulating the over 20,000 domestic pharmaceutical companies remains a serious challenge

An otherwise cheerful wholesale trader of generic medicines, Amrit Pal Gupta, who also owns a pharmacy in a posh locality in Delhi's Lodhi Colony, gets agitated these days whenever there is a mention of the quality of the products he sells. Gupta, who has been promoting low-priced, India-made generic medicines for the past two decades, has had to field a growing number of queries concerning generic drugs. His sales have also taken a hit in the last two years.

"Can you cite even a single example or evidence of a generic medicine that has done any harm to any patient?" Gupta instantly counters when asked about the safety of medicines manufactured in India. Instead, he shuns multinational pharmaceutical companies for promoting their expensive brands through "mean strategies".

Like Gupta, of late, many other chemists, doctors and executives working with pharmaceutical companies are confronted with questions related to quality, safety and efficacy of Indian medicines. "Patients are certainly much more curious and inquisitive these days," says a senior medical practitioner at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, Delhi. "The negative publicity that this industry has received in the last one year has done serious damage to its credibility and the trust of patients has been impacted. It will take years to restore its reputation," says the doctor. Some patients, he adds, simply refuse to accept prescriptions for generic medicines and insist on imported brands.

India-made medicines, which are much cheaper than imported drugs and have, therefore, been the lifeline for various developing countries so far, have come under the regulatory lens, more so in the past one year. Ranbaxy, which gained much negative publicity after pleading guilty in America to fraud and admitting to charges of producing fake data to get fast approvals for generic medicines, hurt the industry the most. Faced with criminal charges, the company had to pay a fine of $500 million to US authorities.

But this was just the beginning of the troubles for Ranbaxy and for others in the business. While more Ranbaxy facilities were proscribed by the US, other leading generic players such as Wockhardt, Agila Specialities, RPG Life Sciences and a facility of Sun Pharma too came under the US Food and Drug Administration's scanner. Many batches of the medicines were recalled from America, the world's largest pharmaceutical market. Some factories of Ranbaxy and Wockhardt also faced strict scrutiny in Europe.

The FDA's observations during the inspections of Indian facilities brought to light some dirty facts. The findings of these observations, unlike those of other inspections, were subsequently made public. The FDA's inspection of Ranbaxy's Mohali factory had, for instance, revealed the presence of hair and grease spots in tablets. The factory also allegedly lacked adequate hygienic facilities. Similarly, in its Toansa factory, FDA inspectors found flies. Wockhardt also faced similar troubles with hygiene.

Doubts about the quality of medicines made in India became stronger. Though many argued that the FDA's inspection parameters are different and far more stringent than those of other regulators, the incidents did raise concerns about the manufacturing practices and quality standards followed by Indian companies. Though the FDA emphasised that not all Indian pharmaceutical companies were in the wrong, the atmosphere of suspicion created by these incidents overtook several other companies. The repeated failure of Japanese major Daiichi Sankyo, the innovator parent of Ranbaxy, to restore compliance in the Ranbaxy factories, also raised doubts about India's seriousness about quality and safety measures.

Ensuring quality has never been easy in the gigantic Indian pharmaceutical industry. The sector, with over 20,000 registered pharmaceutical companies, remains inadequately regulated. And this has been highlighted repeatedly in the past few years. A 2010 report by International Policy Network found that 7 per cent of drugs purchased from wholesale traders were substandard, and 3.6 per cent of the drugs from retailers contained no active ingredients whatsoever. Some of the spurious drugs contained chalk or talcum powder mixed with a pain reliever to trick and defraud the patient. As many as 92 per cent of pharmacists said they had been offered substandard or spurious drugs for sale at cheaper prices.

Many companies, though not all, cut corners in order to protect their profit margins and glossed over processes to compress the go-to-market time.

The surge in the number of pharmaceutical companies came with the enactment of the Patent Act of 1970 which said India would respect only process patents. This meant Indians were free to make any medicine in the world as long as they adopted a new process of manufacturing it. Not only did this help to bring down the cost of medicines significantly, it also led to the indiscriminate mushrooming of pharmaceutical companies. Before 1970, Indian companies like Cipla had lobbied hard for the change in patent laws because they had found their attempts to make medicines blocked by one patent or the other. All they could do then was make old drugs that had gone off patent. Post 1970, for the next three decades or so, Indian pharmaceutical companies had a free run, until 2005, when India reverted to product patents.

All these years, Indian companies such as Cipla, Wockhardt, Dr Reddy's and Ranbaxy have been major suppliers of low-cost, generic medicines, not just for developing and developed markets, but also for emerging and underdeveloped markets.

Cipla, for example, has a sizeable market in Africa where it supplies affordable anti-retrovirals and other essential medicines. Other countries like Brazil, Romania and Latin America are also hugely dependent on India-made, low-priced medicines.

Several domestic drug-makers maintain that the recent suspicions about indigenously manufactured medicines have been propagated by makers of expensive patented medicines. The domestic companies, they say, have created market challenges for multinationals through fast product approvals and price competitions. "They have become a huge threat to multinational companies which have, therefore, started strategising against them," says an observer.

Even so, the need for tighter regulation is being felt. To raise the regulatory standards in the sector, the industry has proposed that India should become a member of the Pharmaceutical Inspection Convention, an association of drug regulators who agree to follow certain standards. It is estimated that it will take India five years to raise its regulatory ecosystem to that level.

The concerns, however, require to be addressed sooner than that. The reputation and saleability of Indian drugs is, after all, at stake.

Dietary Supplements & Nutraceuticals failed to reach the consumer

Clause 22 of FSS Act, 2006 states that the Food products for special dietary uses, Health Supplements, Nutraceuticals & Functional foods have to be first getting approved from FSSAI and only after the acquiring NOC from the authority they will be allowed to be distributed in the country.

Dietary Supplements, Health supplements, Functional foods and Nutraceutical Industry are suffering the brunt of FSSAI’s Product Approval Scheme, despite having a stay order by the Mumbai High Court. The scheme has been amended eight times since its inception in 2012 and was most recently in May, 2013. The machinery failed to provide interim relief to the importers and manufactures as guaranteed by the court, till the time the decision is pending.

The port authorities have been demanding product approval from the importers despite the stay till August, 2014. This has become a severe problem as the authorities are reluctant in sending landed products for testing without the product approval due to which no clearance have been made for import of goods in India.

Some industry people complain that they had applied for more than one year but the status of their application is still unknown, the result, they are unable to sell their product.

India is a potential market of Nutraceuticals & Dietary supplements with increasing life expectancy and subsequent increase in lifestyle diseases. As per reports, India would take rapid stride in the coming decade in this sector. But unfortunately due to the ambiguity on product approval scheme, the industry is incurring heavy losses. Some FBOs have already winded up their businesses in the very initial period of their launch because of heavy losses incurred.

The issue is very severe and the industry associations have been trying for a comprehensive solution to the problem with FSSAI, so, it is now upto the Apex body to look into the matter and come up with a permanent solution to this issue.