June 21, 2024
Today "INDIA FOOD SAFETY CONCLAVE" held in Bangalore International Center. This Conclave inagurated by Health Minister Dinesh Gundurao.
The aim of the event was to bring together practitioners, academicians, and professionals to discuss the problems and share their knowledge on the latest methods and practices. The event was inaugurated by Mr. Dinesh Gundu Rao, Minister of Health and Family Welfare in the Karnataka government. Speaking on the occasion, the honorable minister talked about the importance of food safety and the need to raise awareness about the same.
The event featured national and international guest speakers who highlighted the importance of food safety culture, testing, verification, and validation, as well as food safety technology. The keynote address was delivered by Depinderjit Singh Sachdeva, CEO & Executive Director, Weikfield Foods Pvt. Ltd. Speaking on the importance of Food safety, Mr Depinderjit said, "In the current environment, Food Safety is key to any business. If it is not safe, it is not food".
Talking about Food safety culture, Ms. Csilla, Head of Food and Retail Industries, Lindstrom group mentioned the need for an organization to have a documented plan to develop, maintain and improve its food safety culture.
Prof. Abhoy Ojha, Professor of Organizational behavior and human resources at IIM, Bangalore spoke about the long term commitment required to build a culture of food safety and the challenges to implement the same
Mr. Subhajit Gupta, Head Corporate Quality, Britannia Industries Itd, discussed the journey of implementing a Food Safety Culture at Britannia industries and the positive impact of it and the investment required.
Dr. Nimish Shah, General Manager, Regulatory affairs South Asia, Unilever, spoke about the challenges of inculcating a good Food Safety Culture and integrating sustainability in the program which is the need of the hour.
The discussion on testing revolved around the importance of rapid testing kits for pesticide residues. The need for safe agricultural and harvesting practices were highlighted during the segment.
Dr. Lalitha, Retd. Chief Scientist, CSIR-CFTRI, Mysore highlighted the importance of testing, validation and verification processes with respect to Food safety.
Dr Koushik Bannerjee, Director of ICAR-National Research Centre for grapes, Pune spoke in length about Maximum residue levels on various food crops and how these limits are arrived upon.
Dr. Soma Dasgupta, Applications Engineer, Agilent technologies mentioned about the role of instrumentation and in particular about the use of chromatography in detecting Pesticide residues.
Mr. Vijayanand, Research technologist, ITC Life Sciences & technology center, mentioned about the impact of pesticide residues in food on the image of a brand.
Mr. Rangu Rao, CEO of Safe Harvest Pvt. Ltd. discussed the claims for pesticide free labels and the process of validating the same. He also highlighted the high cost of testing and stressed for more cost effective solutions.
The technology section talked about the wide variety of technologies available to deal with issues of food safety and production like 3D printing, modeling systems and software to trace food from farm to fork.
Mr. Shashi Kumar, Founder and CEO of Akshayakalpa moderated the discussion about the application of technology and automation in the food industry where Dr. Anandaramakrishnan, Director of CSIR-National Institute of Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, (NIIST) Trivandrum, talked about engineered human dynamic gastrointestinal system.
Mr. Ritesh Prasad from Dassault Systems talked on the areas of ideation/formulation/recipe management/packaging design and development and Manufacturing Operations management and how different KPIs can be measured and tracked to make sure a quality product (food) comes out for usage.
