The Indian High Commission in UK had organized a conference at the historic Westminster Hall, London to promote food, drinks and agriculture trade between UK and India on the 19th January 2012. Your columnist had been invited to give an overview of the food and agriculture situation in the country, and also explain the regulatory regime on food safety in India. Besides India’s High Commissioner and the Food Regulator from UK, the highlight was the presence of Lord Karan Billimoria of the famous Cobra beer fame.
Let me however share the basic issues with the readers. As India emerges as a major hub for agriculture production – not just in cereals, spices, tea, coffee, cotton, fruits and vegetables but also wine and dairy products, our share in the global agricultural trade is on the rise. However in the absence of a clear strategy with regard to export destinations, and a difficult relationship with the regulators in EU, the current levels of export are nowhere close to the potential. More importantly, in the absence of clear rules regarding norms, standards and protocols between the trading countries, disputes with regard to quality often put the exporter in a difficult situation as getting the goods back to the country of origin is extremely difficult, and litigation in local courts against the importer can be so long drawn that it defeats the purpose in the case of perishable produce.
Before one gets into the specific details – whether of honey or basmati rice, it is important to get a clear understanding for the principles. While food safety should be of paramount importance, traceability and residue levels should have a relationship with known impact on human health rather than on the technical possibility of discovering parts per million which have no causal relationship with human health. Besides one has to understand that the human body is also a dynamic system – and has its own ways of coping with the environment. The fact is that the regulatory regime is today just another way of imposing very high costs of compliance to reduce the competitive edge of emerging economies as agriculture is becoming unviable in the European Union on account of very high factor costs. One also notices that the argument is twisted each time: sometimes the stress is on physical quality parameters, and then the focus shifts to ‘area of origin’. Take the case of honey for Europe. In addition to laying down standards for Minimum Residue Levels (MRLs), the EU is also stressing on traceability and area of origin – thereby increasing costs of compliance. The basmati case is even more intriguing – for here is a case in which standards are being revised every now and then under the cover of consumer protection without any real correlation to human health and safety.
It’s also important to place the production and trade in rice (including Basmati rice) in perspective. India produces over one hundred million tonnes of rice, and UK imports less than… of it. In fact even within the Basmati rice component, the highest share of Indian exports goes to the Middle East. There is no denying the fact that chemical fertilizers and pesticides are used by farmers to optimize production from limited land resources. However, the per hectare fertilizer and pesticide application in Indian agriculture is much lower compared to their European counterparts or the world average. In any case these chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and now GM crops are being introduced by the very same MNCs who speak in a different voice when marketing their produce, and another voice before the European regulators. The norms for residue levels which have are now being prescribed by the UK regulator can only be described as restrictive as the following example will show. Japanese eat hundred times more rice than an average person in the UK, live longer and their rice has a residue level which is at least ten times higher than what the UK regulator accepts. Even within UK, for the same class of pesticides, the MRLs for wheat, barley and oats is two hundred times higher. It is therefore apparent that these MRLs are not based on considerations of human health alone. The point being made by India is that the onus of proving that current MRLs are harmful to human health should be on the regulator, for it is difficult to prove otherwise as the majority of the world’s population does not seem to be having a problem with their food.
The British regulator in his presentation adopted the stiff, upper lip attitude and dwelt on the fact that regulators in the UK were truly independent of their Ministers, and that they were purely based on ‘science’. It was pointed out by your columnist that all regulators are supposed to be independent, and retaining their independence was part of the job and that one could not crow about it. India too had a tradition of fiercely independent regulators who did their jobs well, and without much fanfare. India now had the Food Safety and Standards Authority and the Export Inspection Council to address the concerns – not just of the domestic consumers, but also of the export consignments.
Do these seminars and interactions make sense? Yes. Because one is not addressing the British regulator. One is addressing the consumers, the buyers, the media and the polity to explain the Indian position to them. And people across the world are beginning to listen to India, and our position is not for us alone. It’s a position for all those countries in which agriculture and food continue to play a salient role in their economies and livelihoods.