With food poisoning and diarrhoea becoming a common occurrence, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is working towards creating a network of 34 microbiology labs across the country that will be equipped to test food products for 10 pathogens, including E coli, salmonella and listeria.
“These labs will help test food for microbial contamination that can lead to spoilage of food and potential health risks,” said a senior health official of FSSAI.
Another official said: “In fact, diarrhoea and food poisoning is so common that most people do not even report such instances. However, it is the job of the department to ensure that the food is safe. These labs will be able to test the food samples collected during routine surveillance for microbes now.”
Data from the National Centre for Disease Control, which tracks the trajectory of several diseases every week, shows that acute diarrhoeal disease and food poisoning were the two most common outbreaks in the country. There were over 1,100 outbreaks of acute diarrhoeal disease across the country in the last four years and nearly 550 outbreaks of food poisoning.
However, none of the state food safety labs are currently equipped to test for pathogens as they require maintaining live reference samples, expensive reagents and a microbiologist. “There are 79 state food testing laboratories in the country, but none of them really tests for microbes. They are equipped to test for protein or carbohydrate content of a food item to see whether it has what is written on the pack,” said the official.
