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In the wake of the row surrounding Nestle’s Maggi noodles, an RSS affiliate has asked the government to “completely prohibit” companies that engage in the production and sale of hazardous food items from doing business in the country.
Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM), the economic wing of the RSS, has urged the government to “properly frame standards for ready to eat” food items and ensure rigorous punishment for violators. “The government should properly frame standards for ‘ready to eat’ from content to labeling and also provide a provision for rigorous punishment for violation of the standards. The government should penalise the companies that engage in production and sale of such hazardous food items and also completely prohibit them from doing business in the country,” said a resolution passed by the SJM’s National Council, adding that the citizens too “should boycott the products of such companies and create awareness in the society.”
“Not just a ban, there should be legal action against the companies that have been playing with the health of the people,” SJM’s national co-convener Ashwani Mahajan told The Indian Express.
“We feel that foreign companies are disrespecting the country’s standards and laws and are indulging in unethical business practices,” he said.
He also said that there should be a “thorough probe” into all food products sold in India by Chinese companies.
Pointing out that the tendency to flout regulatory provisions was on the rise, the resolution said that cases of ‘mis-describing the products…makes a mockery of the prescribed standards”
To support its argument, SJM invoked the example of usage of the term “frozen dessert “ instead of ice-cream for substituting cream with hydrogenated vegetable oil and of companies using the term ‘beauty soap’ in place of ‘toilet soap’ to reduce the Total Fat Matter (TFM) content from 75% (prescribed for toilet soap) to 65% to reduce costs.
The resolution added that despite court orders, “a lot many shortcomings have been deliberately left” out in regulatory provisions framed to stop sale of junk food with high transfat, sugar and salt levels in schools and colleges.
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