Maggi Just Skims the
Surface
Without Indian consumers
knowing what safe food is, food safety will remain a half-baked idea
The
Maggi controversy is quite queer. Not long ago, the Food Safety Standards
Authority of India (FSSAI) tested milk nationwide and found 70% milk
adulterated. It happened about the same time that China executed people for
adulterating milk with melamine in 2008.
The
2006 Food Safety Act had just become operational in 2011 and here was one
important food item -for rich and poor, young (most importantly children) and
old -found to be a vector of all possible microbes and extraneous particles.
India was producing what could well be called the most `complete milk':
complete with detergents, edible oils, colours, urea, water, you name it.
The
media, unsurprisingly , went into a frenzy . It seemed the moment of reckoning.
No more unsafe milk! No more unsafe food! Then came the machismo: we are not
some feeble, effete society of consumers that `mundane' milk could undo us.
Before
this, pesticides in soft drinks had received much attention. No machismo but
sheer prudence in this case. It was reckoned that the poor do not drink
Coca-Cola or Pepsi, and the rich can choose to splurge less. So, overall, it
wasn't a big deal. Did anything change? Not really .
Then
there was Maggi. This was about beware customer, beware government and beware
deceitful Nestlé. The upshot of all this hysteria is that Indian consumers
remain woefully unaware and uninformed. This is reflected in facile prudence or
dangerous bravado that follows every food safety-related outrage.
The
government is overstretched. Today , India's command-and-control approach to
food safety has severe limitations, given the lack of physical, human and
institutional capital for administering food safety . India needs a paradigm
shift from relying solely on supply-side food safety and develop demand-pull
systems for it.
Demand-pull
systems work with consumers demanding quality and safety attributes in food and
forcing the supply side to fall in line, else face punitive market response. A
true demand-pull system includes government and its agencies in the ambit as
culpable if found wanting.
When Food is Not a Lemon
Food
safety in a product is a credence attribute. Hence, it faces issues of
asymmetric information between sellers and buyers. This asymmetry can lead to
market failures akin to the `lemons market' -a `lemon' being a defective used
car -in the classic work of Nobel laureate George Akerlof. The solutions that
fellow Nobel winners prescribed for correcting such market failures -such as
signalling (Michael Spence) and screening (Joseph Stiglitz) -apply here too.
The
message to take home in this is that the government needs to intervene not only
as a controller but also as an agency to facilitate signalling and screening
mechanisms. Without this, there will be a `lemons market' for milk, Maggi and a
lot more.However, the signalling or screening mechanisms are contingent on
consumers having a minimum level of knowledge and awareness.
As
of now, consumers do not know what is `safe food' and how and where to get it.
Hence, the government needs to create a credible, commonly accepted and
acknowledged system of third-party food certification and educate the consumers
about it in a mission mode.
The
FSSAI has created labels for some processed food. But these are hardly
recognised. How far such la belling has made consumers aware about the
certification and its ele ments also remains unclear. Also, a Good Agricultural
Practices (GAP) certification system for fresh prod ucts that is more urgently
needed re mains an unfinished business.
A
credible certification system is a double-edged sword if it informs about what
the certification entails.
It
not only tells the consumer how good the certified product is, but it al so
tells her how bad the uncertified product could be.
Consumers
would know adequat ely about food safety only if it is taug ht from a young age
in schools. Not teaching them young has first-order consequences, as the
epidemic disre gard for standing in a queue in India will testify.
Let's
be real here. The task of ensu ring food safety with such diverse va lue chains
is a gigantic one for even the most well-meaning government.
The
government can undertake ma ssive awareness campaigns and sig nal intent with
severe strictures for laxity in food safety. Unless this happens, there will be
many more Maggis to boil. What is surprising is not that Maggi has been
indicted but that only Maggi has been picked out.
Rejoice Over Spilt Milk
The
news on food safety awareness is disappointing. As part of a study to assess
awareness of urban dairy consumers in Pune, we asked consumers about the
changes they made following the news about food safety failure in milk. `Almost
none' to `very little' were the common responses.
Less
than half among educated and comparatively high-income consumers in Pune did
not know that it's important to have pasteurised milk.More than 80% did not
know about adulterants in milk other than water.For zoonotic diseases -which
can be passed from animals to humans -the awareness was near zero.
If
only consumers knew what to look for and where to get it, they would be able to
do the right thing by demanding food safety . The seller, in turn, would have
to respond by getting its house in order.
|
Devesh
Roy
|
The
writer is research fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute
ET23JUN15
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