Indian food and beverage industry is growing fast. With increasing urbanisation, growing population, high income levels and multiple earning members in a family, there now exists a huge market for food products at the end-consumer base. This industry is one of the largest in the world be it production, consumption, export and growth prospects. No other sector has caught the fancy of the entrepreneurs and companies alike in order to leverage the increasing propensity of the consumers to splurge and spend on food. We like eating out at different places or simply prepare authentic recipes at home to delight our families using some ready-to-use ingredients. In a nutshell, more and more people are exploring new ways to catch up to this excitement of life.
Having said that, every milestone achieved comes coupled with a concerning problem. India being a vast country supported with different food culture and types is not immune to the problem of food adulteration. When it comes to food adulteration, India has a deep-rooted problem considering the leniency in the system to monitor such frauds, and to top it, the freedom given to traders to indulge in such activities. Though our food laws are in conjunction with the international ones, the ground level situation is very remorse. It is alarming to know that milk which is most widely used as a preparation base for many food items remains targeted for intentional adulteration of food. There has been news all over television and newspapers about the growing concern of use of high content pesticides in vegetables or injections given to the meat products to make it look healthy for consumers.
The food safety requires securing the health of the consumers at every cycle of production. It calls for stringent measures at every process of storage, transport and distribution, hygiene, food preservation, to ensure that high quality products are delivered to the consumers. The Indian retail market which is predominated by unorganised retailing and where a sizeable population thrives on street hawkers in the metros as well, one may well imagine how deep-rooted the problem is. There are discrepancies at the retail level also with spurious packaging or fake labels encouraging people to use branded hi-fi products.
With the whole family consuming at different points, there is a need to sensitise children and mother alike on what is being consumed by them. Every food chain can also work towards this objective, by listing the ingredients in it.
One of the ways of tackling this problem is doing periodical yet frequent tests will keep the issue in check. Purity Test is the first such organised venture in India to provide ease of use food quality tests at affordable prices.
Moreover, we require collective efforts of the players in the industry to come together and ensure that a quality end product is delivered to our customers.
