NEW DELHI: The Central Government will soon appoint a Food Authority under the Food Safety and Standards Act that calls for integrated food laws to be administered by a single autonomous and scientific regulatory body, Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said here on Tuesday at the first International Food Regulatory Summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry.

Inaugurating the conference on the theme `Aligning India to the World,' Dr. Ramadoss said a food authority would be appointed within the next four months along with a professional system and experts to implement and monitor the Food Regulatory reforms. All the packed foods would need to have labels with nutritional value and trans-fat measures from August 2007, he said.

The Minister pointed out that like all other developing nations India was facing developmental dichotomies where the urban population was facing obesity and lifestyle diseases on the one hand and, on the other, a large segment of the population was suffering from malnutrition. There is a tremendous potential of a partnership by the Indian food industry in improving public health by enhancing nutrient delivery to both the segments, he added.

The Government will strengthen the regulatory measure as most of the health issues were related to food, and the enforcement of the Food Regulation Act was a step towards the process.

"Harmonisation of food law and regulations is not a process of developing one law for all nations. It is rather a process by which appropriate national law is established and administered to meet the needs of assuring acceptable levels of food quality and safety."

Secretary of the Ministry of Food Processing Industries P.I. Suvrathan said the Government was in the process of appointing a group of experts to gather data from different parts of India to create a benchmark and standards on the basis of which different issues of food regulations could be addressed.

"A huge Indian population involved in agriculture has never heard of standards whereas quality and standard is dependent on the agricultural sector. The challenge for India to set up food regulations also depends on linking the growth of the food processing market to agriculture as the current production is not being able to match the demand of food processing requirement."

Chief of Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)'s Food Quality and Standard Services, Nutrition and Consumer Protection Division, Ezzedine Boutrif said that food regulation laws should protect consumers but should not be a constraint to industrial growth.

India should learn from the experience of other countries as ASEAN countries have a lot of similarities with India in setting up food regulation laws. "Food safety is considered a basic human right by FAO but recent food safety incidents in different parts of the world have made consumers less confident."

Vice-Chairperson of Codex Alimentarius Commission Karen Hulebak said Codex had a dual mission to protect the health of consumers and ensure fair food trade practice.

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