New Delhi: A day after allegations against major brands such as Dabur and Patanjali selling adulterated honey were made public, India’s food standards regulator Thursday said it will review the findings and improve its systems accordingly.
The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) Wednesday accused most top and smaller brands of selling honey mixed with Chinese sugar syrups that are designed to evade the current safety checks of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).
CSE director general Sunita Narain said a team of researchers had tested samples of 13 honey products from different brands and found only three cleared a specialised test that could screen for these syrups. The remaining brands had cleared the standard C3 and C4 tests used by FSSAI to check if the product is adulterated.
Dabur, Patanjali and Emami Zandu refuted the allegations, saying their products adhered to FSSAI’s standards.
The FSSAI issued a statement Thursday saying: “The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has taken note of CSE’s investigation on adulteration in honey. The Authority appreciates the efforts of Civil Society Organisations like CSE to promote awareness among customers about food safety and standards and will utilize the findings of this investigation to bring about any improvements in the food safety ecosystem pertaining to honey that are found necessary.”
At Wednesday’s press conference, Narain said a FSSAI order in May 2020 showed that the regulator was aware of the use of golden syrup, invert sugar syrup and rice syrup to adulterate honey, but has yet to take action against the manufacturers.
The May order had asked importers to register with the FSSAI and to inform it of the use of imported products.
ThePrint reached members of the FSSAI, including chairperson Rita Teaotia and chief executive officer Arun Singhal for a comment through phone calls and emails, but did not receive a response till the time of publishing this report.
In its statement, the FSSAI also responded to specific issues raised by CSE.
Why TMR tests were dropped
One of CSE’s criticisms of FSSAI was that the organisation had, in its latest guidelines issued this July, dropped a test known as Trace Marker for Rice syrup (TMR) that detects rice syrup in honey.
The TMR, when combined with the more sensitive Specific Marker for Rice syrup (SMR) test, has a better chance at detecting adulteration by rice syrups, according to CSE.
In its statement, the FSSAI said that since SMR has already been made mandatory and is a more focused test (only detects rice syrup in honey), scientific experts felt the TMR test is no longer necessary.
“This view was concurred by the Ministry of Agriculture, and hence TMR has not been made mandatory as a test method,” the statement said.
Why NMR test is not standard
The CSE’s research findings state that while most brands passed the tests prescribed by FSSAI, they failed the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) test — the only test that detects the new modified ‘Chinese sugar’ being used to adulterate honey.
NMR tests were made mandatory this August to screen honey meant for exports but is not part of FSSAI’s standards.
The FSSAI, in it statement, explained that for NMR tests to be useful, a database of various chemical compounds for authenticating the origin of a sample of honey is required.
“No such database exists at present for Indian honey and hence, NMR testing will have limited utility,” FSSAI said.
“The cost of conducting NMR test is also quite high and the volumes available at present would not be sufficient to motivate laboratories for investing in this high end equipment,” it added, saying that no food regulator in the world has so far mandated NMR as a test method for honey.
For their study, the CSE had the honey samples tested by a lab in Germany.
“As far as detection of fructose is concerned, the scientific team in FSSAI is of the opinion that the currently prescribed method elemental analysis/liquid chromatography-isotope ratio mass spectrometry (EA/LC–IRMS) is as sensitive as NMR, if not better, for detecting fruit origin sugars,” the food regulator said.
It also said it has asked CSE for details of the samples and the tests conducted.
“As soon as details become available, they will be analysed by FSSAI to draw conclusions about the protocols followed and suggest any improvements that are required in the test methodology for future.”
CSE responds to companies refutal
Dabur and Patanjali denied the honey adulteration allegations and called the CSE’s investigation a bid to “malign their brands”. The CSE Thursday rebutted the companies denial.
In its statement to media, Dabur had shared a copy of an NMR test report from a German lab to show it had passed even the specialised test. However, CSE pointed out that report is of just one sample.
“There is no mention of the batch number of the sample tested. So, it remains unclear which batch is being talked about,” CSE said.
“On the other hand, we have provided three batch numbers of three samples tested of Dabur; that is BM3463, with the date of manufacture of May 25, 2020; BM3589, manufactured on July 10, 2020; and BM3636, manufactured on August 5, 2020. All three batches were found to be adulterated. In the absence of this information on laboratory test by the batch number, Dabur’s claim of purity is not tenable,” CSE said Thursday.
Responding to Patanjali’s statement, which accused CSE of promoting expensive German technologies, the organisation said that the Indian government had mandated the use of NMR tests.
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