More than 170 individuals and organisations along with the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic
Agriculture (ASHA Kisan Swaraj) have cited the detrimental and irreversible health and socio-economic impacts of mandatory food fortification. They have written to the Food Safety and Standards Association of India (FSSAI) urging it to scrap its plans to make synthetic/chemical fortification of foods mandatory in the country.
Signatories included medical experts, nutritionists, agricultural scientists, farmers’ organisations, academics and concerned citizens from across India. They have alleged that food fortification will lead to market shifts in favour of large corporations, loss of livelihoods for small and informal players, monocultures in diets and reliance on packaged foods, lack of independent and conclusive evidence, and conflict-of-interest concerns.
In January this year, the FSSAI issued draft regulations on mandatory fortification of edible oil and milk with Vitamin A and D. FSSAI has also announced intentions to make rice fortification mandatory with Vitamin B12, Iron, and Folic Acid starting 2024. The government recently initiated a three-year centrally sponsored pilot scheme on rice fortification and supply via PDS in 15 districts across the country. Since April, the government has also started to distribute fortified rice through the mid-day meal scheme and the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme citing widespread nutritional deficiencies. Fortification approaches are receiving major a push in the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) processes too, including from India. The FSSAI has recently responded saying that that it sees fortification only as a complementary strategy to diverse diets. This in turn was in response to an earlier letter sent by civil society groups to FSSAI in November 2020. Activists and experts point out that FSSAI’s intentions are questionable since it has cited industryfunded studies to justify fortification on a national scale, wilfully ignoring conflict of interest since those very entities stand most to profit from such a policy.
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“If FSSAI really saw fortification as a complementary strategy, then why is fortification mandatory while dietary diversity and other holistic approaches to malnutrition are optional?,” reasons the experts in their letter to FSSAI.
A major problem with chemical fortification of foods, explains the letter, is that nutrients don’t work in isolation, but need each other for optimal absorption. Further, in undernourished populations such as India’s, the key problem is calorie and especially protein inadequacy as a result of monotonous cereal-based diets along with low consumption of vegetables and animal protein. Adding one or two synthetic chemical vitamins and minerals will not solve the larger problem, and in undernourished populations can lead to toxicity, including gut inflammation. “Evidence supporting fortification is inconclusive and certainly not adequate before major national policies are rolled out,” said Dr Veena Shatrugna, former Deputy Director of National Institute of Nutrition.
“It is ridiculous that the government is promoting polished rice, which has lost a lot of its nutrition on the one hand, and talks about chemical fortification on the other hand”, pointed out Dr Debal Deb, ecologist and traditional rice conservator.
The letter also points to serious economic impacts on consumers and informal players like small rice millers, oil ghanis/cold press oil mills, small farmers, and local enterprises that will not be able to make the heavy investments required. An indicative cost according to the government is 3.2 crore for rice fortification. “We have been hearing so much about atma -nirbharta, but since the only suppliers of synthetic micronutrients are multi-national corporations, with a history of cartelization and price hikes, FSSAI will seriously jeopardize our food security by making us dependent on such entities. FSSAI has no mechanism to regulate prices of such micronutrients that it wants to insert into our staple foods”, said Usha Soolapani of ASHA.
The letter warns the government against a blanket approach to meet the complexity of malnutrition in our country. The simple and complete solution they say is to improve diets and diversify them via widely available nutrient dense vegetables, millets, and animal protein, dairy. Local communities, farmers and women’s collectives, and households can be supported via projects like backyard poultry and livestock, home gardens and many others tried and tested methods including agricultural pathways towards better nutrition, which are the best source of nutrition, even according to the FSSAI.
