THE national food regulator Bangladesh Food Safety Authority (BFSA) has been conducting a very limited number of tests at laboratories owned by other government institutions before the emergence of Covid-19. As ususal we are very good at formulating laws but feign utter disregard at their implementation. The weakneses in the system are evident when a government institution can’t become fully operational even in six years. The time has come to review the BFSA’s activities to assess the changes necessary to transform it into an effective organisation.
Since its establishment, the BFSA said that it was busy formulating necessary regulations and building other administrative frameworks in the first few years for which they did not need a huge manpower. But food frauds continued to get away with crimes as severe as falsely attributing medicinal qualities to their foods by way of advertisements in the absence of regulations.
The BFSA even could not complete forming all the technical committees required under the Safe Food Act 2013. The committees that were formed are few in number and they also do not meet regularly. The BFSA also failed to determine a safe limit on the use of food additives and other chemicals in processed food.
The Covid-19 outbreak increased the demand for processed food and with the rise of online delivery the food supply chain entered an uncontrolled phase as suppliers also often buy the food from dubious sources. But the BFSA has no idea about it just like other food supply chains where gaping leaks regularly leads to widespread contamination of food. The country abounds with evidence of food adulteration as banned and harmful chemicals are being used in foods, including essential popular foods such as Biriyani and beef.
Experts said that the issue of contamination is likely to persist as good agricultural and aquaculture practices are still a far cry. The agricultural input companies are continuously luring farmers into using excessive agricultural inputs.
Unsafe food has been a concern for decades in this part of the world, especially after 1969, when the first law for keeping food safe was formulated, and the situation only worsened when factories were built and they started releasing their waste directly into the environment, especially into open water bodies.
A number of government ministries and departments, including Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution, have separate laws relating to food safety but their enforcement is lax as well. Two months before the coronavirus crisis emerged, a pure food court in January found that the BSTI had destroyed evidence relating to the prosecution of 61 companies accused of marketing 73 uneatable packaged food items the year before. If this is the situation with BSTI what can we expect of BFSA?
