Adulteration in food items will not be tolerated: Chief Minister

Keeping in mind ‘ease of doing business,’ procedure of obtaining a drug license should be made simple, deadline must be fixed

There shouldn’t be a scarcity of testing equipment in laboratories: Chief Minister

In view of the festivals, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has issued instructions to start a state-wide campaign to ensure the purity of food items. In a review meeting with the department of Food Safety and Drug Administration, the Chief Minister also directed to maintain effective control over the manufacture, sale and distribution of substandard, spurious, adulterated or banned drugs. The Chief Minister issued the following guidelines:

The state government is determined to ensure the availability of safe and healthy food as well as medicines to the 25 crore people of the state. Under no circumstances the manufacture, sale and distribution of substandard, fake, adulterated or banned drugs will be allowed in the state. Maintain effective control over such activities.

Adulteration is playing with the lives of common people and it will not be tolerated under any circumstances. In view of festivals, the process of checking food items should be expedited. Immediate action should be taken on every complaint of sale of adulterated food items. Statewide inspection should be done in mission mode. Strictest action should be taken against those involved in adulteration.

It is encouraging that mobile food testing laboratories have begun to operate at 07 divisional headquarters.The facility to analyze samples of medicines has also started in Meerut, Gorakhpur and Agra. Similarly, establishment of divisional laboratories in Lucknow, Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Basti, Moradabad, Jhansi, Saharanpur, Aligarh, Mirzapur, Bareilly, Azamgarh, Ayodhya and Devipatan divisions should be completed at the earliest. Daily monitoring of these works should be done by posting a nodal officer at the district level. These are important projects of wider public interest, accountability will be fixed in case of unnecessary delays.

Presently the analysis capacity of food laboratories in the state is 30,000 food samples per year. The number and capacity of laboratories should be increased in order to test more than 01 lakh samples. Similarly, action should be taken to increase the analysis capacity of pharmaceutical laboratories which is at present 10,000 drug samples per year to 50,000.

In order to achieve ‘Ease of Doing Business,’ it is necessary to further simplify the process of issuance of drug licenses. The process of issuing a license after the application must be completed within a stipulated time frame. The applicant should not have to worry. Necessary action should be taken in this direction.

Full-time posting should be done by selecting the eligible officer on the post of Drug Controller.

It would be appropriate to take cooperation from CSIR, IITR, NBRI, CIMAP, DRDO and central laboratories/institutions for capacity enhancement of state laboratories. Get NABL certification of food laboratories in all the divisions of the state.

There should be no shortage of testing equipment in laboratories. Their maintenance, validity period, functionality etc. should be tested as per the standards. After reviewing the pharmaceutical and laboratory cadre, new posts should also be created as per requirement.

There should be deployment of qualified and skilled personnel in the laboratories. The process of selection of eligible youth for all important posts including Scientific Officer, Microbiologist, Analyst, should be completed at the earliest.