TISL urges Government to set up independent Food Authority
Wednesday, 19 March 2014 00:57
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Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) is urging the Government to take immediate action to set up an independent Food Authority with qualified personnel dedicated entirely to food control administration to protect the public health by reducing the risk of food borne illness.
Such an authority should work in close liaison with the Ministries of Health and Trade but should be accountable to the Cabinet of Ministers or the head of state, TISL pointed out in a comprehensive Position Paper developed after lengthy dialogues with medical officers, nutritionists, government officials and experts in environment and food safety.
Setting up of an independent Food Authority will protect consumers from unsanitary, unwholesome, mislabelled or adulterated food and will help to maintain consumer confidence in the food system, the Position Paper said.
“Recent media reports suggested that food-borne illnesses are on the rise with deaths due to cancer going beyond deaths due to other illnesses such as cardiac arrest. This shows that we should take immediate steps to ensure a strict regulatory mechanism for both domestic and imported food products which are fresh, preserved and processed,” said TISL Executive Director S. Ranugge.
He said that during the study done on food safety, it was found that the main defect in the food control and food safety system in Sri Lanka is its absolute inability of enforcement although the Food Act itself recognizes the imperatives of food safety as identified by the FAO and the WHO. While it claims that its provisions are mandatory it makes no attempt to enforce the mandatory provisions.
Food Control Administration is a specialised field that has to be constantly engaged with food manufactures, producers, administrators and most importantly the consumers. This is the principal reason why many developed and developing countries have entrusted food control and safety to a separate institution outside the Ministry of Health whose primary task is ‘health care delivery’.
Hence, the broad mandate and the structure of the proposed Food Authority should cover the framing of regulations to lay down standards and guidelines in relation to articles of food and specifying an appropriate system of enforcing various standards and lay down mechanisms and guidelines for accreditation of certification bodies engaged in the certification of food safety management system for food businesses.
The authority should provide scientific advice and technical support to the central government and provincial administrations in matters of framing the policy and rules in areas which have a direct or indirect bearing of food safety and nutrition. Further, it should collect and collate data regarding food consumption, incidence and prevalence of biological risk, residues and contaminants in food products, identification of emerging risks and introduction of rapid alert system.
Creating an information network across the country so that the public receive rapid, reliable and objective information about food safety and issues of concern should be a responsibility of the authority and it should contribute to the development of international technical standards for food and sanitary standards.
