The New Nation - Internet Edition

Zakir Hossain Khan and Farzana Zaman

Dreams turn into nightmare when the poison engulfs, even, the milk that keeps my baby survive. The adulteration in baby food, with high content of melamine, is a new addition in the realm of crimes. A group of dishonest business entities (inside and outside the country) have been doing these sorts of crimes in collusion with the concern government and the private officials. People, usually, believed to have the presence of impure foods in their daily intake, but the extent of the adulteration was first noticed slightly by the ant-adulteration drive in the recent past time. Ultimately, this anti-adulteration drive brought the golden-scope for the traders to earn abnormal profit by importing outdated and adulterated foods along with the so-called highly nutrient baby foods. The traders attracted the several mothers through mind-blowing advertisements and many mothers shifted to milk powder and have already dependent unconsciously on the imported death-trap. Around 42,583.46 metric ton milk power was imported in last FY 2007-08,and its market price is around Tk.1500 crore; on the other hand, the rough estimate of the economic benefit of breast feed is around Tk.2,000 crore. If the government has been more active to create awareness, we could have saved not only Tk.1,500 crore also the cost of illness includes the treatment and other associated costs.

Any sickness is related to the productivity loss and Medicare costs; if any disaster is held in public health that will push the government to divert the allocation for development activities to mitigate the crisis. We are better informed that several African countries have been bound to spend the lion-share of their national budget for mitigating the diseases like AIDS, Malaria and other risky diseases. Bangladesh is also at risk of facing this cost burden as the rate of contaminated diseases and cancers have been increasing alarmingly. Taking these threats into the mind, several specialists, including public health experts, have been warning frequently about the future health related risks and upcoming disaster that would be caused by the irresponsible as well as ignorance of the concern government agencies; unfortunately, no mentionable move from government is observed yet. We think this is the last time to do adopt the precautionary measures and invest in safeguard measures to avoid any unbearable future costs for Medicare costs and loss of productivity of future generation. As our problems get momentum, it is the high time to adopt significant following steps. To control any crisis creates from the food related public health concern the Government should adopt the following steps as immediate measures.

To confirm the purity of the consumed foods including the presence of melamine in baby milk Govt. should declare either BCSIR or Dept. of Chemistry of DU or ICDDRB or any research institute as only recognized testing center to avoid any confusion and giving right signal to the producers, traders, and consumers. We have to recall that we have already experienced the formalin, arsenic and latest melamine in the foods, no one know what is in the next. Regarding reliability of the testing centers, the institutions must be examined ensuring adequate equipments and staff and conducting any tests.

Govt. should make the campaign about the health cost of not breast feeding and for increasing the exercise of the breast feeding and localized food products, exemplary punishments of the adulterers and regular mobile courts,

Instant test of the suspected food products at customs clearance points through recognized several testing institute and giving importance on the safety or sanitary issues both the goods exported and consumed locally.

Not only in case of the food poisoning at all sectors the major lack is inaccuracy or absent of right information to the citizens or consumers. In that case, under the leadership of nationally famous media personal a campaign program should be started soon with the regular advertisements about the safe foods and legal provision into electronic and print media and engagement of the popular professional to motivate the general people. A region-wise focal point can work to bring the efficiency in the campaign.

In case of any adulteration in foods, especially in the presence of the melamine or other chemicals in powder milk or other baby foods, thousands of kids will face unexpected sickness which may cause temporary or permanent damage of their body organ along with the cost of treatments and future risks of failure to maintain the normal life. In that case, the concern citizen, in favor consumers, should file case against the adulterers based on the estimate of the cost of illness.

Since 1860 around 18 laws/acts have been introduced to deal the cases related to food safety and protecting adulterations (Dr.T.Afrooz, Sep'08), but the major drawbacks of those laws/acts are- i) absence of unique and complexity free law; ii) not equitable (in CPA 2008, in case of the adulteration the alleged business man would get sentence not more than three years or 2 lac Tk) in case of penalty for all types of adulteration; iii) complexity and time-consuming specially in case of getting compensation; iv) people have to heavily dependent on the advocate to choose the law and its provisions; v) absence of regulating the local re-packing (as per Institute of Public Health and Nutrition, around fifty percent food products including local and imported are found adulterated). Besides, unfortunately, the Consumers Protection Act 2008 has to bring changes in several clauses especially the member lists of the council and legal provision in case of the adulteration or business of impure foods.

Food safety in Bangladesh is now the cross departmental issue and 16 departments or ministries play role in food related matters. At all respects, including effectiveness of the policy and easiness of implementations point of view, this current form of food safety management is not compatible with the several developed countries.

It is urgency of creating a central food and drug authority with empowering the appointed food safety related experts (ensuring not to create another bureaucrat-rich burdensome commission) to ensure the quality and safety ness of the product at international standard with adequate facility of testing of all products, framing efficient, equitable and dynamic law/act, SRO/ordinance, accreditation and certification (both system and product), inspection/monitoring and enforcement of the law and overall food safety related policy formulation and guiding public and private sectors. This authority will only be accountable to the parliament. CAB or other citizens group, working to ensure the consumers' rights, should work coordinated way to research and disseminate information to the consumers and Govt. should provide regular fund to the programs of these organizations.

They will educate the consumers about the current and upcoming health risks through radio and TV channels and print media can be used to pass the information at the cost effective way. The Govt. should ban all advertisements of the foods which are not supported by the scientific proofs.

Govt. should engage experts to introduce the market based environmental tools such as green tax, subsidy to organic food producers, ambient permits and other tariff to the marketing of not expecting food and drugs. Apart from this, non-tariff barriers should be practiced to ban the suspected food and drug items at import stage.

A single window administration can only take any action promptly and the decision making process becomes easier. Dynamic law and its right enforcement, precautionary measures and right standardisation can ensure the expected safeness of foods.

Above all, the mass awareness about the adulteration and change of the perception about foreign food and beverage can only protect any food related health risks beyond attainable. We can only say that consciousness begets consciousness.

(Writers: M. Zakir Hossain Khan, Researcher in economics and governance; and Farzana Zaman, Lecturer of MIU)