Lack of NABL-accredited food testing labs haunt Dakshina Kannada, Udupi

Parvathi, Vijay (names changed) and hundreds of students, residing in a college hostel and a residential school in Shaktinagar, had to be shifted to hospitals after they developed acute stomach ache, vomiting and diarrhoea.

With the students discharged from hospitals and on the road to recovery, the focus has shifted to the unsafe food that wreaked havoc on the health of students.

Sources in District Food Safety and Standard Office told DH that samples of food served to students in the hostel and water samples in the residential school had been collected and sent to National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) accredited Food testing laboratory in Bengaluru on February 7. “The report is expected next week,” sources added.

Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts, with thousands of hotels serving mouth-watering delicacies, hundreds of hostels with students from across the country, street vendors, bakeries, and packaged drinking water units, do not have NABL-accredited food testing laboratories.

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Under the Food Safety and Standards Act, of 2006, every district should have a food testing lab equipped with technical persons and testing facilities.

The Act also made it mandatory for the State Food Safety Authority (SFSA) to have mobile testing vans.

No food safety officers, testing labs

Unfortunately, among the four government-run laboratories, only two labs (Mysuru and Belagavi) in Karnataka are accredited by the NABL. Information obtained from the District Food Safety and Standard Officer under RTI by RTI activist Sanjeeva Kabaka revealed that DK district has only one district-level officer under FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India).

The taluk health officers have been entrusted with the additional responsibility of food safety officers at the taluk level.

“According to the information, only samples of branded food companies were sent for testing to NABL accredited private lab and VSIX Analytical Labs Private Limited in Bengaluru. All reports have declared that samples were safe under FSSR (Food Safety and Standards Regulations 2011). It was also found that samples of milk, ice cream and mineral water vulnerable to adulteration were not sent in 2022,” Sanjeeva said.

Thus, DK has not registered a single adulteration case (983 cases were registered in Karnataka from 2017 to 2022).

‘DK needs a lab to test honey’

Leader of Opposition in Council of Mangaluru City Corporation Naveen D’Souza, raising the issue of street food culture in Mangaluru in the council meeting held recently, added the need to test the quality of food served to the public. “How often do the officials test the quality of food supplied in various eateries? Who will be accountable if anything goes wrong ?” he had asked.

Kanara Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) president M Ganesh Kamath said coastal districts also need a lab for testing honey, which is also produced in the region.

He recollected that KCCI had appealed to the Additional Director General of Foreign Trade (ADGFT) on setting up the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) approved fish and fisheries product testing and a certification lab to boost fish exports from DK, Udupi, Uttara Kannada districts and surrounding areas under the district export plan.

An average of 1,18,466 tonnes of fish and fisheries products are exported from DK and Udupi districts per annum. In order to export fish, exporters get fish tested at MPEDA Quality Control Lab in Kochi.

M’luru FSSAI does not have a lab

Mangaluru imported 3,37,629 metric tonnes of raw cashew, 845 metric tonnes of rice, 6,903 metric tonnes of wheat and 7,73,598 metric tonnes of edible oil in 2021-22.

An FSSAI branch in Mangaluru, the second such branch in Karnataka, does not have a testing lab and is forced to send its samples to the NABL accredited Lab.