KOCHI: Banning ‘Maggi’ should not be the end of the campaign against unhealthy food, but the public clamour for food safety should continue, said Thuppil Venkatesh, principal advisor to the Quality Council of India and National Referral Centre for Lead Poisoning in India.
Speaking to ‘Express’, Venkatesh, popularly known as the ‘Lead Man of India’, said lead was ubiquitous, be it processed/preserved food, paint, water, cosmetics, toys or even some of the traditional medicines.
“The heated discussion on presence of lead in food products, kicked off by the Maggi fiasco, should go on,” he said, adding that in 20 days Maggi could do what researches and the authorities could not do in 20 years.
Venkatesh, who was in the city to assess diagnostic laboratories as part of making accreditation mandatory for them, called for self regulation on the part of industrial units and creation of awareness among the public to constantly demand safety tests on food products. This, according to him, would ultimately pave the way for improving the current scenario, where almost everything is toxic.
“There is no safety limit for lead as even a small quantity of the metal could be dangerous for children. Among paints, ‘yellow’ is the colour that contains the largest quantity of lead. Unfortunately, all the school buses are painted in yellow,” he pointed out.
“Currently, we are using data gathered by international agencies, as we do not have our own. The globally accepted standards are very difficult to follow as India’s environmental norms are different,” said Venkatesh, who is a world-renowned expert in the field, adding that educating students and teachers on the hazardous effects of lead was the best way to deal with the issue.
“Educate school teachers, who will educate the students. Then, the children will educate the family members, who will in turn educate society. Kerala, which has set a model in health care, should play a pioneering role in food safety as well.
Every food manufacturing unit should set up its own testing lab and test the quality of water and the materials used. Lead can also get mixed with food items through the machinery used to manufacture them.
The batch number should be mentioned on every packet of food products, and the number should have details of the test result, for the benefit of the common man,” he said.